


A Bright and Bitter Flame

by forthegreatergood



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Explicit Language, Gen, Humor, Post-Thor, Substance Abuse, Violence, fem!Loki
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2017-11-16 03:23:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 90
Words: 314,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthegreatergood/pseuds/forthegreatergood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Thor,  canon-divergence.  Loki doesn't survive his fall from the Bifrost and winds up reincarnated on Midgard as a mortal magician named Lucy with no memory of her previous life.  Her decision-making skills have not been much improved by the transformation.<br/>_____<br/>“Do I even want to know why you think I’m your missing brother?”</p><p>“The similarities are startling,” Thor managed. She looked pointedly down at her chest, then back at him, her lips pursing. He knew the look in her eyes, the set of her mouth, the tension in her jaw. Oh, how he knew that sharp, angry, hard face. He could practically hear Loki hissing “You idiot” in his ear.</p><p>“You deny it, then?” Hogun asked.</p><p>“Seriously?” Lucy’s left eye twitched slightly. “I have at no point in the last thirty years seen or experienced anything that would lead me to think I’m a dude, an alien, a god, or any combination thereof. So yeah, I’m going to have to go with denying it.”<br/>_____<br/>Irregular updates.  Thanks for reading!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All characters property of Marvel.
> 
> Not beta-read. Please post any noticed errors in the comments, and they'll get fixed.

Lucy Jones stared at the signs, scowling. “These are, without a doubt, the worst-marked exhibits I have ever seen. ‘This way to the seahorses,’ _my ass_. We just came from the seahorses, and they’re in the other direction. We just came from the seahorses _again_ , I might add. You have the worst sense of direction I have ever had the displeasure of being navigated by, Emma. You must have been a hoot on road trips.”

The North Pacific giant octopus clinging to her back turned a deeper shade of red and squeezed her shoulders irritably. She took a drag on her cigarette and toyed with the sovereign ring on her right hand. “Fuck it. Too many exits to tell which one is the employee exit. You want to just pick one and deal with the alarms when they go off?”

The tips of two arms simulated a passable version of a shrug. Lucy sighed, then grunted as the octopus adjusted her position.

“You know, if you hadn’t gone snacking through researchers’ traps, I wouldn’t have to break you out of aquariums, and you wouldn’t have to hang off me like the world’s ugliest toddler,” Lucy commented, pushing open the next set of doors. She took a few more steps before realizing that the room was occupied. A set of familiar faces stared at her in shock. A set of _familiar, heroic, super-powered_ faces stared at her in shock. “Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me.”

The stunned silence was broken by two simultaneous sharp cries when one delicate red arm snaked forward, plucked the cigarette from Lucy’s fingers, and flicked it at the nearest of their unexpected companions. It struck the dark-haired woman in the cheek just as a sudden jet of water from over Lucy’s shoulder caught a blond man in the face.

“Oh, fucking hell, Emma!” Lucy yelped. She turned on her heel and bolted, running back toward the seahorses as the sounds of startled, instinctive pursuit came from behind her. She made it through a pair of fire doors ahead of what sounded like Captain America and sealed them shut, breathing heavily and getting her bearings while he started punching through it.

“For a hundred-pound gelatinous backpack, you’ve got some pretty big balls, Emma,” she panted, trying to think. “Even MODOK wouldn’t pull that shit without his exoskeleton on.”

The octopus grabbed onto a tank and pulled her toward it, then submerged her body, siphoning water over her gills with a fair amount of vigor.

“I’m just saying, leave the supervillainy to someone more qualified,” Lucy continued, flinching slightly as the fire door gave way. “Come on, time to go.”

The octopus slithered up onto her back, and they raced down a flight of stairs, Lucy sealing the doors behind her as they ran. She finally burst out onto a balcony, only to find them still five floors up. The van was nowhere in sight. She cursed loudly. The van. She could probably outrun half the Avengers and whoever the hell had been with them, but a conversion van with an aquatic life-support system bolted into the back was absolutely not going to.

The captain dropped onto the balcony in front of her, and she jumped back with a start.

“Expelliarmus!” she shouted, gesturing sharply. He went flying back off the edge with a surprised look on his face but managed to catch himself on the railing.

“Seriously? Are you cribbing things from Harry Potter now? You are the worst magician I’ve ever met,” Iron Man snorted, descending from above them with a certain casualness that she found intensely irritating. Or maybe it was just the tinny quality of his voice broadcast through the external speakers. Or the smug look he always had on his face behind his visor.

“Just be glad I can’t remember the one that kills people,” she snapped, clambering onto the railing. Captain America looked up at her, and she gave him a quick wink. “No hard feelings, handsome,” she said, vaulting off the wall.

“Whoa, there,” Iron Man called, dipping to catch her. He found himself tumbling against the building as two stabilizers shorted out and wound up clinging to the same purchase as Captain America. 

Lucy slowed her fall and touched down delicately, sprinting off through the parking lot with the octopus clinging to her hard enough that she wondered if her ribs were going to snap under the pressure. She flexed her fingers as soon as she saw the van, and it faded from view, invisible to the naked eye. She slammed into the side and pried the door open, scrambling into it without pause. Lucy tripped over the industrial mats on the floor and went sprawling into a pile of equipment. Emma loosened her grip, and Lucy groaned as the cold, slick flesh slid down her arm.

“Why are octopods so gross?” she muttered, sitting up. “And why are scientists so fucking messy? All the time, every lab I break into, it’s a fucking disaster area. Tubes and beakers and shit all over the place. Who can do proper science when nothing is clean, I ask you that.” She scooped the octopus up in her arms and helped her into the tank. “If the filtration and aeration doesn’t kick in when I turn it on, just throw something at my face or start a fight with a pack of superheroes or something.”

The octopus’s skin rippled with a few rapid color changes.

“Right back at you, buddy,” Lucy grunted, rubbing her shin where she’d barked it on a net handle. 

She crawled into the driver’s seat. The keys were in the ignition, right where she’d left them. The chase seemed to have been abandoned in favor of getting Captain America and Iron Man off the balcony safely and, presumably, figuring out if she’d stolen anything besides an unusually pugnacious octopus. Lucy settled in and took several deep breaths. Her hands were shaking. She hadn’t expected to get into a fight with anyone more imposing than the security guards. Emma hadn’t been entirely wrong in pointing out that wearing high-heeled boots and a peasant skirt to a robbery had not been the best decision she’d ever made. Oh, well. She was sure she’d make worse ones.

Lucy shook herself, rolled her shoulders, stretched her neck, and cracked her knuckles. She was mostly steady again. She added a silence spell to the invisibility spell and turned the van on. Everything cranked to life, and she relaxed a little at the whir and humming of the aquarium’s support systems coming online. She just had to get down to the bay, and then Emma could ride the tide back to where she’d settled in.

“You know,” she called, “this would have been about ten times easier if you’d just let me turn you back into a human fucking being. You only wanted to be an octopus for a couple of years, remember? You were going to come back and publish all these groundbreaking, revolutionary papers? Really put your name in the history books?”

She glanced back to find that Emma had arranged her arms into a reasonable facsimile of a rude gesture.

“I’m just saying,” she sighed. “The point of this wasn’t so you could spend the rest of your life as calamari on the lam from your fucking mortgage. You initially wanted to learn something from this. And, you know, tell other people about it.”

She put the van in gear and pulled forward. Slow and steady and under the radar. That’s all she had to do for the next half hour.

*****

“Did we really just get into a power-fight at a private party over an octopus?” Jan asked, rubbing her face gingerly. Bruce tsked at her, and she waved him off. “The skin’s not broken. It’s a little tender is all. But that did just happen, right?”

“Yes, so far as I can tell. Nothing else was disturbed,” the docent sighed. “We’ll need to do a full inventory in the morning, but the only specimen obviously missing is that octopus. I’ve never seen one of them do anything like that before.”

“Lucy Jones is a magician,” Bruce explained with a shrug. “I imagine that had something to do with it.”

“One can only hope.”

“Are Tony and Steve okay?” Natasha asked as Clint returned, not looking up from the manifest the docent had provided.

“Steve got the wind knocked out of him. Tony’s going to be picking gingerbread and caramel out of those thrusters for a week. Both of them had their egos banged up a little. Aside from that, they’re fine.”

“I imagine ‘fine’ is a relative term for Tony if he got beat up by Jones again,” Bruce sighed. “He takes it awfully personally.”

“Hard not to when she does things like turn his rockets into an easy-bake oven,” Clint observed with a shrug.

“Not to mention that Coulson seems to like her more than he likes Tony,” Jan added.

“Coulson does not like Jones more than he likes me. He just has to act like he does, because she could turn into an asset, or, you know, she could turn him into a frog,” Tony protested, clanking toward them. Steve shot him a sceptical look. “Did anyone figure out what she was doing here?”

“Stealing that octopus,” Natasha supplied.

“That’s it?”

“So it would seem.” She looked at the docent. “Was the octopus an exhibit or a research specimen?”

“Research,” he answered immediately. “The ones on display are lab-hatched and -raised to socialize them properly. Wild-caught specimens sometimes have difficulty adjusting to the lack of privacy and unfamiliar environment. They’re generally fairly shy animals.”

“Who was working with it?”

“Um, it should be on the manifest in the last column. I think it was Dr. Swanson.”

“Would it be possible to talk to Dr. Swanson in the morning?” Natasha asked, pulling out her phone and punching the name in. Nothing interesting came up.

“I’ll be sure she sees you first thing.”

“Thank you.” She updated her calendar to reflect the appointment. “We do appreciate your cooperation. This may be nothing--this particular offender spends a lot of time on petty vandalism and criminal mischief--but we’d like to be sure of it.”

“We appreciate your attention. It would be terrible if this were just the prelude to something more serious. Obviously, our security isn’t geared to handle a substantial threat.” The docent shivered, running a hand through his thinning hair.

“Oh, one more thing?” Tony asked. The docent raised his eyebrows in question. “Do you have security cameras? I’d like a copy of the footage from tonight.”

“Seriously, Tony?” Steve asked, groaning.

“I’m sorry, you don’t think the look on her face when her octopus started the fight for her was hilarious? Also, who doesn’t want video of an octopus starting a fight? I’ve seen bikers who were less efficient about starting brawls than that cephalopod. Sorry about your hair, though, Hank. I know it took you a while to get it looking that precisely terrible.” Pym glared at him.

“I guess I’m a little biased, since we both wound up hanging off the side of a building sixty feet up on account of her.”

“Live a little, Cap. She jumped off it with a hundred pounds of undercooked appetizer hanging off her shoulders and was fine. For real, though, I would like a copy of that footage, if there is any. There are, uh, legitimate purposes it will serve.”

“I’ll make sure security sends a copy home with Ms. Rushman tomorrow morning.”

“Thank you.”


	2. Chapter 2

_Something was wrong. They weren’t moving. Why wasn’t the car moving? Why were they at such a weird angle? She tried to pull herself up, but there was something wrong with her arm, and her chest hurt, and the seatbelt was tangled around her anyway, and everything was wrong. She could smell gas and something else that smelled like raw meat but couldn’t be because that didn’t make any sense. They were in a station wagon, on a road trip, heading to Disneyland. She couldn’t be smelling raw meat. There wasn’t any raw meat in the car. The car should be moving. Maybe they ran out of gas. Maybe Dad was doing that thing where you use a tube to siphon gas out of a tank, like he’d had to do that one time coming back from grandma’s house. He’d smelled like gas for hours afterwards. Maybe that was what that horrible, wet sucking sound was. That didn’t make any sense either. It hadn’t taken long before, but this wouldn’t stop. And it wasn’t regular. Why did her chest hurt so much? If she could open the door, the dome light would come on. She could see, if the dome light was on. It was okay. They weren’t moving. She wouldn’t open it very far. It would be okay._

_The light showed her that what was wrong with her arm was that it had an extra joint, which seemed like a weird thing, and that the sucking sound was coming from her mother’s throat, because there was a piece of glass the size of her palm sticking halfway through it. And Dad was asleep, curled around the wheel like it was a pillow, and he shouldn’t be asleep. Mom was choking on a piece of glass, and they should be going to the hospital, and he shouldn’t be asleep at a time like this. He needed to wake up. She needed him to wake up. Mom needed help, and he needed to drive them to the hospital, like Mom had the time he’d cut his arm up with that saw, and....Oh. That’s what that smell was. Blood. She’d smelled that same odor on the car ride to the hospital when he’d needed all those stitches to fix his arm. Lots of blood. So much blood he’d passed out, and she’d had to keep pressure on the bandage to keep him from losing more, and Mom had kept saying “You’re doing so good, honey, so good, just keep that up, just hold steady” over and over and it had almost been enough to make everything okay even though she was clearly frightened herself._

_A little sliver of anger blossomed in her chest. Mom had taken care of him when he needed it, and now he was just taking a nap. How could he even sleep through that noise? It was so loud. It was blocking everything out, even that loud alarm sound that some dim part of her realized was herself screaming. She shouldn’t be screaming, she told herself. Panicking didn’t help. That was what her grandma had told her when they had been climbing a tree and the neighbor’s little brother had fallen and broken his leg. That’s why her arm had the extra joint. Broken. Funny. It didn’t hurt. The broken leg had seemed to hurt a lot. But it was for sure broken. She didn’t know why she hadn’t realized it right away. Arms don’t grow extra joints, they break. They all needed to go to the hospital. Dad needed to wake up. Mom’s throat was making that sound less and less regularly. That meant something, she thought, something bad. Someone needed to do something. Dad needed to wake up. Mom couldn’t drive them, because she was hurt, and she could pass out like he had._

_She fumbled with her seatbelt buckle until it came undone and pushed herself into the middle seat. She could reach him from there, with the arm that wasn’t broken. She could reach him, and make him wake up. Except that he should already be awake, because his eyes were open, and he was looking at Mom, and if he could see what was going on, why wasn’t he doing anything? Why was he just hugging the steering wheel like that? Why wouldn’t he even answer her? Why was he leaving it to her to fix this? She couldn’t even reach the pedals yet. Mom had let her steer a few times around a parking lot once, but she’d had to sit on her lap just to see over the dashboard. She couldn’t do anything about this. She couldn’t. Even if she didn’t panic and kept pressure on the cut. That wouldn’t help. But she was the only one, and somebody had to do something, because nobody else was around, and it wasn’t fair, this shouldn’t be happening, it shouldn’t be, it wasn’t fair. Even when the broken leg had happened, she hadn’t been alone. They had worked out how you were supposed to line your arms up to basket-carry somebody together, and then helped each other get him back to the house, and one of the other kids had run ahead to tell everybody what happened. She hadn’t been alone like this, left to figure out what to do while the horrible sucking sound just got louder and raspier and louder and raspier. She needed to make it stop. She needed to make everything better. Her heart felt like it was on fire with the need to put everything back the way it should be._

Lucy twitched awake, half out of the dream, barely registering the sound of someone choking to death on their own blood before adrenaline shot through her system. Mom. Mom needed her. She kicked out, cracking her shin on metal, and reached blindly for the source of the sound. Her knuckles struck hard plastic, and she finally woke up completely. She blinked stupidly at the aquarium’s filtration system as it wheezed and snuffled. One of the tubes had come loose, and it was bobbing and burbling against the filter outflow, sucking in air along with water. She didn’t remember leaving the damn thing running. The panic began to recede, and she felt sick. She pulled herself upright and rested her head on her knees. Fucking nightmares. Fucking filter. Her hand and her shin, the same fucking one she’d already skinned last night, were both throbbing. _Fucking life._

Sleeping in the van instead of dragging herself to a hotel room had been a bad idea. She had a crick in her neck and sand in her mouth, her shoulder hurt, her clothes were dirty and rumpled, she smelled like a backwater at low tide, and she was reasonably sure the malfunctioning equipment had just given her a heart attack. Her arms were covered in superficial bruises from Emma’s suckers. She felt like hell and looked like she’d gone five rounds with a vacuum cleaner. She wanted a cigarette. Well, first things first. She kicked detritus out of the way, slid out of the van’s back doors, and immediately recoiled at the sunlight. _Fucking sun._ She located a pair of cheap sunglasses in the glove compartment and stumbled back out. She felt vaguely drunk and still half asleep, like there was a part of her brain still stuck in the nightmare. 

Lucy rubbed her eyes, almost dislodging the glasses, and desperately wished she’d thought to stuff a bottle of liquor under the driver’s seat. If she was going to _feel_ drunk, she might as well _be_ drunk. She fished a pack of Marlboros out of her pocket and went to light one. The whole cigarette went up in a puff of fire, spraying a rain of fine ash in her face and hair. She stared at her hands for a long moment, mentally calculated how much power she’d tried to put into generating a small flame versus how much power she’d clearly actually put into it, and sighed. 

“Fuck _everything_.”

She tapped out another cigarette and pulled out her lighter. So much for magicking herself clean and flush and onto a beach in Maui. Anything she didn’t want to risk blowing up was going to have to wait a few more minutes until the magic bubbling just under her skin settled back down. She _hated_ that dream. There was no surer way to ruin a whole fucking week than to have that dream. At least she was already on the boardwalk and still had her phone and a wad of crumpled fives stuffed in her pockets. Now that she wasn’t halfway to dry heaving, her empty stomach was rumbling. She spotted a food cart and started in its direction, leaving the van to finish draining its battery running an unoccupied fish tank. The police would find it eventually. Or SHIELD, depending on how thoroughly they were doing their investigative work on this one. 

Lucy’s lips twisted. She could call Agent Coulson. She’d pulled off a successful heist, assuming one was willing to be extremely flexible in defining both ‘successful’ and ‘heist.’ She was entitled to get some gloating in. If she was lucky, Coulson would even listen instead of just putting the handset down on his desk and muttering an occasional “Yeah, okay” while he went back to doing paperwork or transferring her to one of the new recruits. It wasn’t quality gloating, admittedly--not like she’d been able to do after she’d hijacked Doom’s entire contingent of robot invaders for three hours and used them for an impromptu performance of the entire Nutcracker ballet, complete with intermission--but she’d take what she could get this morning.

She paid for a hotdog, ignored the vendor goggling openly at the round bruises, and wandered off, flicking absently through her phone until she found Coulson’s number.

“Your flying boy scouts failed to foil my latest dastardly scheme, SHIELD! Soon the world will tremble before my octopus army, armed with death rays and mantles full of extremely cold water!”

Lucy wished, not for the first time, that she could manage a proper evil laugh. She had a great maniacal laugh, but it was genuine laughter. There was no doing it on command, it tended to upset her allies, and generally it occurred at inopportune moments. She’d had people refuse to work with her again because it had creeped them out so badly. Of course, she’d have refused to work with them again, anyway, because they couldn’t understand what was so funny about turning dogs plaid, even after she’d tried explaining it. “Dogs can’t see color” had not registered as a valid punchline in their sad little minds, and she was above teaming up with such philistines.

“Jones.”

She grinned. She shouldn’t like him. The guy was a SHIELD goon. It was a little embarrassing to like him. “Yes! It is I! My fearsome reputation has--”

“Did Dr. Thomas make it back to the ocean okay?”

Lucy frowned. “You could at least let me fucking finish.”

“I apologize,” he said evenly. “Go ahead.”

“Never mind. The moment’s already ruined.” She took a sullen bite of her breakfast and tentatively reached out, looking for the errant marine biologist. “Dr. Thomas is kicking an interloper out of her den as we speak.” She swallowed. “Dr. Swanson handling things better than she was?”

“Dr. Swanson has been debriefed, yes. I hope you’re not going to make a habit of this.”

“Are you scolding me? Is that what’s happening here? I’m not above going on a rampage, agent. Also, what part of ‘this’ are we talking about?”

“Turning people into animals, Jones. You’ve already made a habit out of pretty much everything else on the table.”

“Every time I get tempted, I remember what a clusterfuck this thing with Emma turned into,” she assured him. “Maybe at some point I’ll turn a qualified therapist into a lobster and try to get her back to dry land voluntarily, but aside from that it’s a no-go.”

“You want to give me a run-down on exactly how that happened? Without the theatrics?”

“Nope. Theatrics or nothing.”

“Suit yourself,” he said.

Lucy wanted to laugh. SHIELD agent extraordinaire, who knew she could literally turn him into a newt, trying to boss her into confessing over the phone from a thousand miles away. Talking to him always made her feel better about things. “If you didn’t remind me of my dad, you wouldn’t get away with any of this shit, Coulson.”

He didn’t say, “I don’t remind you of your dad,” but she could hear him thinking it. He was thinking it because he’d only read the files and seen the pictures. On paper, they didn’t have much in common. Under the skin, though....It was enough to banish the man from the dream, dead and cold and with his sternum crushed against the steering column of an old Ford.

“I met her at a bar, tried to impress her, made a few stupid promises. You know how that goes. Turned out she wanted--and I mean ‘burn down the world to get it’ wanted, not ‘vaguely dreamed of it from time to time’ wanted--this. So okay, right? I told her to take some time, think about it, and she did. And I came back to find that she’d sold every last thing she had, dumped most of it into charity, set up a trust for herself and a safe deposit box for when she got back, and was ready to stab me in the face if I reneged. So I did what she wanted. I mean, who wants to get stabbed in the face. I’ve checked back once or twice a year since then, to see if she’s ready to come back. No dice. I don’t think she’s ever coming back. She fucking loves this. I’ve never seen somebody so in love with their life that isn’t me. Anyway, she got dredged up by this research crew and slapped in the fish slammer, so I sprung her and got her back to the ocean. She’s doing fine.”

“She told Dr. Swanson what happened.”

“She told Dr. Swanson what happened before she bugged out to the Puget Sound. I mean, I get that this is a different way of imparting the information, but the data is hardly anything she hasn’t seen before.”

“Dr. Swanson is asking for a position with SHIELD.”

“So give it to her. Her best friend is a sentient octopus with an aggression problem and three PhDs. She kind of fits the bill. Maybe hook her up with a box of letter magnets and a deep-sea submersible and turn her into the aquatic version of Hank Pym.”

“I’m not going to get a bill for a consultant’s fee from this, am I?”

“Shit, that’s not a bad idea.”

“ _Jones_.”

“Fine, no. You’re not. Oh, that dude you’ve got on the squad now, Thor?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny having ‘a dude’ named ‘Thor’ on ‘the squad’,” Coulson said flatly.

“Whatever.” Lucy rolled her eyes. Reminding her of her father was only going to get him so far. “Mimir said something about him, but he might have just been blowing smoke up my ass, because he’s a douchebag. Does this neither confirmable nor deniable Thor happen to hail from someplace that may or may not exist but if it did would be Asgard?”

“Jones.”

“Huh. Interesting.”

“I didn’t say anything. And maybe Mimir wouldn’t be so cranky if you hadn’t told him his name sounded like a Czech sneezing around a waffle.”

“Well, it _does_. And sure you did. Just not out loud.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Great talking to you, Coulson.” The line went dead. Lucy chuckled and tossed the phone into the nearest trash can. She walked off, eating the hotdog. Let SHIELD trace the phone all the way out to the landfill. The day was brighter already.

There was a golden apple in her bag that Mimir had said Thor would need. Of course, he’d also said that Thor was her brother. That she’d wronged him, before she’d died and been reincarnated here, that her past-life parents were still alive, that they missed previous-incarnation-her. She sucked at a piece of sausage casing stuck between her front teeth. _Fucking Mimir_. Like she wanted to hear about past lives and karma from a decapitated head stuck halfway up a sacred oak in the middle of nowhere. The apple weighed on her shoulder and made her bag swing oddly as she walked, off her rhythm enough to keep slapping into her hip.

Lucy was pretty sure he’d just said that to screw with her after she’d refused to get him down--like just being further down the tree was going to help with him not having a body, somehow--but it had worked. She hadn’t been this angry about her parents’ deaths in a long time. A teenage boy whistled at her from the other side of the street, then yelped as his sneakers caught fire. She smirked. _Back to normal, baby_. The smirk was banished by the returning thought of Mimir and his fucking wisdom of the fucking ages. He’d single-handedly managed to suck most of the joy out of her life with a few sentences about some couple she’d never even fucking _met_ , who'd probably never even set foot on this planet. She didn’t know about the sibling aspect. Her parents had been lucky to have her. She’d known as long as she could remember that a little brother or sister had been completely off the table. 

She hadn’t missed it, not really. Her friends’ relationships with their siblings had been a mixed bag, and then her parents had been dead and the only thing she could think of when she saw the older kids in the system and on the street and all but on the street trying to protect their younger brothers and sisters, keep them close, keep them fed, keep them safe, keep them sane, was “Thank fucking god it’s just me.” She’d had a hard enough time just being responsible for herself, controlling her power instead of letting it control her, learning to care for people without getting so invested that she’d do something stupid, keeping her head down enough that she didn’t freak anyone out. She’d dealt with her own pain badly, too. She didn’t want to think about the clusterfuck it would have been if she’d been trying to take care of a loved one going through the same thing.

Lucy kicked at a stray bit of litter and picked up her pace, stretching her legs. She moved her hands over her skin, bruises fading and disappearing as her fingers drifted past them. Her hair untangled and straightened, and the stains slid from her skirt and tanktop. Better. She snapped her fingers, and the lingering smell of salt and the sea vanished. The grubby bills in her pocket turned into a smooth roll of fifties.

Her defining moment had been getting drunk, dropping acid, and then getting arrested. Between the tour of the city and the tour of its jails, everything about it shining like a black beacon through the fog of human misery, she’d decided that the system was bullshit, and that the only way to go was a firm commitment to not giving a shit about rules. She’d holed up in an abandoned building for six months and spent them thinking about who she wanted to be and how she wanted to be it and how best to accomplish that. Then she’d hit a pawn shop, bought the most impressive looking ring she could find, declared that it had given her magical powers, and robbed a bank. 

Everything but a wad of hundreds that fit comfortably in her pocket had gotten strewn all over the city. The press had dubbed it the Robin Hood Robbery, which she thought was kind. She’d been more interested in watching the fallout. She hadn’t stopped moving since then. She’d thought that this was what she’d wanted. It was more like what she’d been born for. She couldn’t stop if she wanted to. She could slit her own throat, and the blood would pour out as a crime spree or a wildfire. Most of the other villains she’d met worked hard to do what they did. She had to work hard to keep it in check, keep it reasonable, keep it from running rampant and trampling down things she wanted to keep whole. It was like having a live coal for a heart. Sometimes she could almost see the sparks pouring out of her mouth when she breathed. 

Oh, and she was locked in a fight to the death over the future of the planet with a pre-Cambrian monster-god that had been going on for the past three years, linearly speaking, and the past four months, cumulatively speaking. Sometimes it spilled over into their dreams, or, more rarely, someone else’s dreams. One memorable occasion had seen her dealing a devastating blow by winning a game of checkers with the bastard. She couldn’t even have a normal nemesis.

Lucy finished the hotdog and tried to imagine the look on one of Coulson’s pet supers’ faces if she laid it all out like that and then followed up with “Good to meet you, bro.” She eventually settled on ‘finding a cockroach in a half-eaten meal.’ Upgraded to ‘parental sex-tape’ if it happened during a bout with her prehistoric opponent. Ancient monsters were ugly as hell. Probably best to just leave it be, then. Toss him the apple, wish him a good life, and avoid him. Or, at least, do her best to avoid him. Her best hadn’t been cutting it lately. 

The run-in with half the Avengers had occurred in the dead of night at a closed aquarium during what was supposed to be a small, elegant smash-and-grab. If the universe had an ounce of love left for her, at least Tony Stark wouldn’t have been packing his suit. Who brought supersuits with them on after-hours private tours? Generally not irresponsible playboy billionaires. Even the sizechange weirdo hadn’t brought his bizarre little rig, had he? But no, Stark-- _Stark_ \--had rolled up loaded for bear.

Her previous attempt at stealth had taken a turn for the stupid and led to a running battle with Doom through the streets of Charlottesville. It had only ended when she’d commandeered a t-shirt cannon and knocked him off the giant robot spider that had been serving as his mount. The cops had looked almost embarrassed for him when they’d shown up to arrest him. “International Villain Felled by Vigilante Wielding Promotional Novelty” was not a pretty headline. 

The local heroes had decidedly looked embarrassed for her, and one of them had gone so far as to suggest that, while her contributions to law enforcement had decidedly been appreciated, maybe she should consider taking things a little bit more seriously if she ever expected to be taken seriously. The news crews had sneaked around the police cordon just in time to get a great shot of her tearing the guy a new one about how she was a super _villain_ , and they’d all rue the day they impugned her XL weapons of poly-cotton blending. Lucy puffed out her cheeks. She was still annoyed at having wasted her ‘rue the day’ speech on that second-rate asshole. If only she’d stopped to think before she’d turned the guy’s costume into confetti. The evening news had, almost to a station, cut the feed there because of the nudity. Audiences the world over caught the grandiose monologuing and missed the part where she’d shot him into the next zip code with the flick of a wrist.

The time before that had actually been a vacation rather than a plot. Her hypothesis that it was impossible to go unnoticed by local law enforcement while being mobbed and called out to as a god had been proven correct. She still wasn’t sure exactly what had started the whole mess, aside from the mass hysteria and absolute faith of the supplicants having generated its own sort of power. She’d been a match to their vapors. They’d come away from it dazed but healed of their ailments. She’d come away from it with five cops covered in frogs and screaming for back-up.

She’d had to completely abandon a curiosity-driven breaking-and-entering in a museum when the suits of armor on display had spontaneously roused themselves and started marching behind her. She was quiet enough, when she cared to be. The clatter of dozens of armored feet on polished marble, it turned out, could be heard from several blocks away. It was also enough of a racket to wake both security guards and the dead.

Lucy cringed a little at the memory. She was sure the security camera footage from that one had gone in one of Stark’s video archives. Probably the news footage as well. Why he felt the need to compile the outtakes of her life, she didn’t know, but she supposed at least _someone_ was getting _something_ out of it. Getting chased out of a tomb by the dead emperor’s suddenly-animate stone guardians while screaming “Why does life have to be so fucking hard all the time?” was really only funny if it was happening to someone else. When you were the one getting chased and screaming embarrassing things, it was less ‘entertaining’ and more ‘a testament to the relative importance of finding out what was in the lacquered trunk in the emperor’s sarcophagus.’ When it resulted in getting mobbed by statuary, it turned out to be less important than when it didn’t.

She hailed a cab and set them on a course for the nearest duck pond. If she were to be honest with herself, she’d been in a bit of a funk since Mimir had spat his little piece of cursed, poisonous truth at her. Her luck had been bad, and she’d reacted badly to a number of small setbacks that she should have brushed off. It wasn’t as if that were even the first time she’d been kicked out of a tomb by its guardians, and at least that time she didn’t really care about the outcome. She was being ridiculous, and she knew just how to shake it off.


	3. Chapter 3

Phil shook his head and turned the news off. _Someone_ , he didn’t need three guesses as to who, had gone through a park pond and turned all the ducks swan-sized and all the swans duck-sized almost as soon as she’d gotten off the phone with him. She had also strewn the general landscape with loaves of bread. Loaves of bread which could run and were self-directed. Three dozen people had already tried to check themselves into mental hospitals, another ten had been admitted to the ER for waterfowl-related injuries, and traffic was backed up for miles in any given direction. Police on the scene were confused, and the local wildlife officers were grimly determined not to take phone calls regarding the incident. He ran his fingers through his hair. He wouldn’t admit to finding video of the event one of the funnier things he’d ever seen. It would only encourage her. _Focus on the cost of cleaning it up_ , he told himself. He’d tried calling her back after the news had begun coming in, but true to form, she’d ditched the phone as soon as he'd hung up on her.

He still didn’t know what to make of her question about Thor. It had seemed liked he’d staggered directly from one alien incursion to the next, first with Thor and his comrades and the Destroyer and then with Lucy and the titanic android she’d demolished--using the power of illogic, according to her, and the power of cascading failure in a non-redundant system, according to their post-mortem. And, of course, the little green child she’d insisted on calling Bobbie, who’d attached itself to her like a symbiote. The file photo on that one had been...interesting. Jones had been grinning like an idiot and throwing up a victory sign in front of the wreckage of the robot and the child’s life-support pod, her shirt spattered with blood where one of the little alien’s hands had punched through her chest and was still gripping her heart. He kept a framed copy of it in his desk, in case he needed to remind himself how bad things could get when she was involved. 

Murderous automatons being controlled by equally murderous deities in a dynastic fight over succession, he understood. Crazed magicians who never shut up or slowed down and didn’t seem to mind when their hearts were almost ripped out of their chests, he had a harder time with. He still suspected she’d been able to communicate with the alien in some fashion, though the only information she’d shared had been that they’d taken “a wrong turn at Albuquerque.” She’d been much more interested in preening over her most recent demonstration of battle prowess.

“First time I’ve ever taken on an alien killbot, Coulson, and I won,” she’d said. “You guys can’t even routinely beat a couple dozen assholes in canary hazmat suits. Bite it, SHIELD.”

The aliens--spindly, smooth-skinned green things with oblong, recurved heads and overly-large, black eyes--had taken the child and gotten the hell off the planet, much to his relief. Jones had seemed a little disappointed, though she’d commented that there weren’t any day-care centers where a parent could check their child and their circulatory system, so she blithely supposed it was for the best. She’d also spent the better part of an afternoon wandering around the tiny town where the battle had finally been won, alien arms wrapped around her neck and chest, alien hand still clenched around her aorta, as if it had been a day-trip for her amusement. He privately chalked up the aliens’ aggressive disinterest in them post-encounter to Lucy’s ironclad disregard for personal safety. A planet full of Joneses was not something he’d be particularly keen on invading or trying to establish trade with, either. And that had been before she’d tried to convince them to try a shamrock shake.

Jones hadn’t said anything at the time about Asgard, or Thor, or other worlds. Then again, she wouldn’t, necessarily, would she? She was as likely to babble about what she wanted for lunch--McDonald’s, on him, her wallet having “fallen out of her coat” when she “punched the killbot a new paradox protocol”--or lecture on some obscure point of ancient mythology--“the funny thing about having sex with a mortal while disguised as an eagle is that nobody buys the disguise for a second, because eagles usually don’t go out of their way to fuck humans”--or show him a card trick--not really a trick because she’d never learned any proper tricks, being an actual magician--as she was to say something useful. He still had the deck of cards she’d turned into all queens of hearts because it was _easier_ than digging out the real queen of hearts. 

In fact, he still had everything she’d ever given him, as well as hard-copy backups of his personal recordings of her and his research into her past. They were all carefully cataloged and deposited in a file box labeled “Evidence: Jones, Lucy.” On the inside of the lid, he’d pasted a copy of the poem “Ozymandias” and a photo from one of her vandalism cases. She’d changed the lettering on the pedestal of a broken Roman statue to read “MY NAME IS OZYMANDIAS, KING OF KINGS. LOOK ON MY WORKS, THOV BITCHES, AND SVCK IT.” The Italians had not been terribly pleased with that one. The only thing he was missing was the first encounter with Mimir; his recorder had shorted out at some point and destroyed everything. He didn’t particularly regret the loss. The incident had started out ugly as sin.

Phil considered Thor’s hammer and his occasional bouts of temper. The countryside would probably be better off if Jones were kept out of earshot of the storm-god. It was bad enough having her occasionally get up the rest of the team’s nose, and they were at least human, from earth, and nominally SHIELD’s responsibility. 

The time she had replaced all Clint’s arrows with bullets mid-fight had put him off his game for a week. Steve, bless his heart, had a hard time doing much of anything that didn’t involve Mirandizing her. Phil had sat him down and made him watch two hours’ worth of archival footage amply demonstrating the fact that, while she looked fragile as a porcelain doll, she could stand up to more than he could without injury or, frankly, significant inconvenience; he still pulled his punches half the time. Bruce was afraid of her. The Hulk seemed to like her, after a fashion. At least Tony, he thought, would blast her into space as soon as look at her by now. He kept a running tally of how much she’d cost him in casually-destroyed equipment. Natasha had legitimately tried to murder her after a month of embarrassingly foiled infiltration schemes. She’d never given a full report on how she’d failed. If previous assassination attempts were anything to judge by, it had probably been something fairly humiliating, like a realistic simulacrum full of streamers and balloons rigged to deploy a giant participation trophy upon being stabbed.

He didn’t want to think about the possible repercussions of her pranking an alien divinity in a similar fashion. And, of course, there was also the possibility that the whole thing was a put-on meant to distract them from some horrible thing she was plotting, either on her own or on someone else’s behalf. She’d thrown half of Chicago into a turmoil with illusions of Godzilla and Mothra duking it out downtown in order to draw forces away from SHIELD’s containment facilities while HYDRA sprung a contingent of captured agents, including Jones’s then-girlfriend. A feint at Thor to put them off balance was hardly beyond her capacity for strategy.

Phil rubbed his temples. At least she generally didn’t take things too personally when they came from the law-and-order side of the equation. She threatened and blustered about tracking people to the ends of the earth and doing ridiculous things, usually at the top of her lungs, but she’d never bothered following through. He couldn’t remember how many of the younger agents he’d had to assure that they would not, in fact, spend the rest of their lives forgetting to wash their hands after cutting up hot peppers or getting flat tires right before important events. Presumably the relentlessness with which she dealt with betrayal and interference from other criminals kept her busy enough that law enforcement never made it to the top of her to-do list. She was still jerking Doom around at every opportunity, three years after whatever he’d originally done to provoke her. AIM had stiffed her out of a performance bonus on some contract work before that; they had since given up trying to sort out what she’d done to their robotics department in retaliation. She definitely had it in her. She’d just--so far--been selective in its use.

He reached for a comm. “Captain Rogers? Are you free to meet with me in half an hour? I have something of an assignment for you.”

*****

Lucy tucked a stray lock of coal black hair behind her ear and frowned. The hired muscle behind her shifted uncomfortably as she leafed through the ledger in her hands. The gang called themselves the Smiths, and they’d been even more visibly disappointed than their boss when the tomb had proven to be empty.

“Well?”

“ _Well_ , it looks like every other sitting president since Adams the Second has been an enormous douchebag.” Lucy’s brow furrowed. “Which is actually a huge blow for villainy all by itself, don’t you think? I mean, Tyler was in here before Harrison was even in the ground. Pretty cool, huh?”

The hooded figure employing all of them--he’d called himself Mr. White, but the name he’d been thinking was Masters--stiffened slightly.

“It might perhaps have been slightly... _cooler_ if we’d found what we came here for, don’t you think, Jones?” he gritted out.

“Does this mean we’re not getting paid?” one of the thugs asked from the back.

“And who’re Harrison and Tyler?” another piped up.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. We’ll hit an ATM on the way back,” Lucy snapped, rolling her eyes. “And Harrison was the president that Lincoln smothered with a pillow after a month in office. Tyler was the guy who succeeded him after swearing not to cross Lincoln on the whole thing with the Canadian border.” She turned to shake the ledger at Masters. “You seriously don’t think written evidence of presidential evil-doing is more valuable than whatever shit Washington cached here with his dead mother? It doesn’t even look like it covered the War of 1812, if this IOU from Madison is any indication. Translate that into 21st-century dollars and then calculate the hit you’d take trying to fence obviously stolen material, and it’s good, okay, yeah, but it’s not _great_. This little book, on the other hand? Call up SHIELD and the president of Canada and start a bidding war for who gets to set it on fire. Your great-grandkids will die rich.”

“Canada has a prime minister,” one of the goons volunteered.

“Dude, I know Canada has a prime minister. It’s a bullshit job, though. They just do whatever the secret president tells them to. I mean, you seriously think Trudeau sat there and authorized the crime against humanity that Department K turned into? Nope! That was all the secret president.”

“We’re straying from the topic, I think,” Masters cut in.

“The topic is that I bet the secret president is going to say ‘Cut them a check, I need that ledger, if it comes out that we hired Booth to assassinate Lincoln, there’ll be a war.’ And I also bet SHIELD is going to say ‘Shit, cut them a bigger check, we can blackmail them over the whole Lincoln thing, and if it comes out that Lincoln was one of Jefferson’s rogue robots, we’ll have to rewrite the history books.’ And then we’ll all be rich.”

“I’ll be rich. You lot are working for a set fee,” Masters corrected her.

“Whatever. I’m just saying, it’s worth its weight in gold.”

“Canada killed Lincoln?”

“Lincoln was a robot?”

“Jefferson was a time-traveller?”

“Yes, yes, and no, don’t be stupid. They didn’t have time-travel in colonial times. Fucking hell, where did you people go to school?” Lucy arched an eyebrow. “I mean, they covered this in junior high in my district.”

“But Jefferson built a robot?”

“Jefferson built lots of robots. You think villainy is a new invention? Fuck, no.”

“Everyone, please stop listening to Jones. She is insane. There is no secret president of Canada or any of the other stupidity she just spouted at you.”

“That’s exactly what the secret president of Canada wants you to think,” Lucy protested.

“Jones, you should feel ashamed of yourself for leading these poor, benighted bastards even further astray.”

“I’m telling them the truth about our founding fathers, and you’re scolding me? Blow it out your ass.”

“But the part about Washington’s buried treasure being gone and us having to hit an ATM if we want to get paid was true?” one of them asked.

“Yes, that part was true.” Masters snatched the ledger from Lucy’s hand and flipped through it. “This is actually rather... _colorful_ , isn’t it?”

“See? Fury may not give a shit about keeping that out of the papers and the _Supervillain Times_ , but I bet the council holding his leash care a lot.”

“How do you know about the _Supervillain Times_?” Masters grunted, focusing on one of the entries. “Wait, am I reading the one from Kennedy correctly?”

Lucy brandished her sovereign ring. “Well, I _am_ a supervillain, so duh? And yeah, I think you’re reading it right. I’m just not sure how much to trust it. Dude was high a lot.”

“But this is...I mean....” A gloved hand disappeared under the hood, touching the masked forehead. “How old could Romanoff possibly _be_?”

“Fuck if I know, man. I dropped out before we got to Soviet history. For all I know, she’s secretly a tsarist superhuman constructed to fight during the first Russo-Japanese war.”

“Jones?”

“Yeah, boss?”

“Be quiet.” Masters seemed lost in thought for a moment, then snapped out of it. “Take the Smiths here, go rob your ATM, and collect your fee. None of us were ever in this crypt. None of you have ever heard of this.” He held the book up. “Do I make myself clear?”

A chorus of assent from the goon squad reassured him. Lucy shook her head. “My fee comes out of the sale of that ledger. If I wanted to hit an ATM for rent money, I wouldn’t be hiring out to whatever half-assed version of the Wild Bunch was riding through town this week.”

“It was your idea,” Masters pointed out.

“For them, sure. I’m fine with _doing_ it, but I want _my_ money to come from this job.”

“That is an utterly pointless distinction. You realize that, right? Hitting an ATM is now part of this job. It’s part and parcel to this job. ‘Other duties as assigned’ now includes ‘robbing an ATM.’ Take your money from the profit there, call it a day, and don’t answer any more of my ads.” Masters’s voice could cut glass.

“Okay, but don’t come calling me when the secret president of Canada’s kicking down your front door and stealing that ledger.”

“There is no secret president of Canada. There is _no such thing_.” Masters’s fingers curled into fists. “Now take everyone else, and get out of my sight.”

“Your loss.” Lucy shrugged. “Come on, ladies and gentlemen, we’re getting paid.” She turned on her heel and marched out of the bunker. The Smiths filed out after her, a few casting uncertain looks back at their employer.

They’d piled into the van and were pulling out of the construction site before any of them spoke.

“Wouldn’t that be like a secret dictator, though? I mean, you can’t get elected if you’re a secret, can you?”

“Thing is that the secret president _is_ elected, but nobody knows that’s what they’re voting for. In a few ways, it’s more democratic than the official elections, since everybody can vote. Like, if a cat can express an opinion, its vote gets counted. Five-year-olds can vote in the election. But, you know, they don’t know what they’re voting for when they cast their vote, so it’s still kind of a problem.” Lucy spread her hands. “What are you going to do, though?”

“Maybe keep your hands on the wheel?” another one suggested.

“Yeah, yeah. Backseat drivers. Somebody with a phone figure out where the nearest Bank of America branch with an ATM is. We’ve still got time to hit the bars if we do this quick.” The Smith in the front passenger seat pulled out her smartphone. “So, what’s the deal with the gang name, anyway? The Smiths? You guys big fans of British alt-rock or what?”

“What?”

“You know, The Smiths? ‘80s band? Morrissey?”

“We’re all Smiths. Last name,” the Smith with the phone clarified. “Used to be the Smith Brothers, but, you know.” She and the other woman in the back shrugged. “Now we’re just The Smiths.”

“Rad.”

“What about you?” one of the Smiths in the back asked. “What kind of name is Lucy Jones, anyway?”

“The one I was born with, dude,” Lucy laughed.

“Seriously? That’s not a nom de crime?”

“Nom de....Does anybody actually use that phrase anymore?”

He looked miffed. “I don’t know. I used to think nobody said ‘rue the day’ anymore, but then I looked you up on the internet.”

“Touche. No, that’s not a nom de crime. That’s just me.”

“You ever think about changing it up?” the Smith next to her asked. “Get on the highway here, and take the next exit westbound.”

“Nah. I considered sticking with the ‘Doctor Whatever’ format, but Doctor Elk City sounds dumb as hell, and The Magician sounds like something you can buy off a late-night infomercial if you’re not too finicky about safety standards and product testing. What about you guys? What happens when somebody who’s not named Smith joins up?”

“They change their names. Left here.”

The Smith behind her pointed. “Look, you can see the sign.”

“Right,” Lucy grunted. “Anybody got a spare ski mask?”

“Can’t you just zap the camera?”

“Sure, if you want to get pedestrian about it. But I’d prefer not to, because then the cops won’t see my bitchin’ Iron Man t-shirt.”

“Wait, you wore that deliberately?”

“Well, it’s not really the sort of thing you _accidentally_ wear to tomb-rob George Washington’s mom, is it?” Lucy demanded, snorting.

“No ski masks. You’re going to have to zap it. I don’t think Doctor Elk City’s that bad, though. It’s not great, but neither’s Captain America, if you think about it. Or Ant-Man. It sounds like the sort of thing that you wind up with because all your other options were taken, or if you let a kindergarten class pick your name.”

Lucy pulled into the parking lot and killed the engine. “Be good while I’m gone, kids.”

She shut down the electronics for a quarter mile. “Open, sesame.”

The machinery whirred softly, and then the front panel was swinging open and boxes were popping open. She was stuffing stacks of bills into the sacks the Smiths _had_ brought, with or without ski masks, when one of them rapped on the window. A security patrol was circling up the road. Lucy snapped her fingers. The watchman slowed, made his way through the parking lot, and then pulled out and headed for the rest of his route while she continued loading the cash.

“You put a whammy on him?” one of the Smiths asked as she passed the bags around.

“I’d suck pretty badly at this if I couldn’t make a security guard think he was seeing the same shit he always sees,” Lucy shot back. “You guys think you can get yourselves back to base? I’m heading straight for Vegas with my take.”

“Isn’t that cheating?”

“Villains,” she reminded them.

“Yeah, we can get ourselves back to base. Have fun getting your ass beat by the mob.”

“Ciao.” She watched them until the van faded into the distance, then snapped her fingers again. The boxes closed, and the machine slid shut, locking up tight. No sense riling up a hornet’s nest any sooner than normal. Not when she had a herd of Elvises to assemble, anyway. 

“Viva Las Vegas, babies.” She opened a portal and stepped through it.


	4. Chapter 4

Steve hung back in the shadows, watching his target. Jones leaned over the edge of the roof, a bottle of dark rum in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He could hear the parade on the street below, but he didn’t have the first clue as to how he could disrupt it. Or even if he should try. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, and as far as he could tell, they were doing it of their own accord; Jones wasn’t playing puppet-master or hypnotizing anyone. Her tall, slim frame carved a charcoal gray hole in the angry neon from the rest of the strip. Her long hair was pulled back in a loose braid, and the sovereign ring SHIELD’s files identified as the source of her power looked far too heavy for her slender fingers. She looked reasonably innocuous--just another stray civilian watching a party--until she turned back to look at him.

“Might as well come up and enjoy the show, Captain. I think they’re doing “Blue Suede Shoes” next.”

“How long have you known I was here?”

“Since you got here? You’re not exactly dressed for a stealth mission, even by Vegas standards. American flag spandex over weaponized glutes and a giant white star in the middle of pecs that can be seen from space tends to get some attention.” Her green eyes flashed with amusement. “I’d offer you a drink, but I have it on good authority that you’re no fun.”

Steve shook himself, unexpectedly nettled. “Whatever you’re doing to these people, knock it off.”

“I’m not doing anything but paying them. Admittedly, their wages are coming out of ill-won wagers made with ill-gotten gains, but still. It’s only a smidge less honest than anyone else’s money, especially in this town. It’s capitalism, really. Baseball, apple pie, a fair day’s impersonating Elvis for a fair day’s wage. It’s so American, you could be leading this parade. Provided you could lay hands on an appropriate wig, of course. Nothing wrong with your look, mind, but it’s not really something The King ever sported.”

“Are you drunk?”

“It’s after dark in Vegas, and I’m a tourist. Local ordinance strictly prohibits me from being sober.” Her slick ruby lips twitched upward in a smile. “Last time I checked, there wasn’t an exemption for national icons or homegrown heroes, but I suppose Coulson can get you off with a warning if the Fun Police decide to bust you.”

He stared at her.

“Can I ask you a question?” she asked, then didn’t pause long enough for him to answer. “I get that you probably didn’t have a whole lot of input into the name. It just screams committee favorite. But okay, you’re Captain America. Is there, like, a Sergeant France running around? Maybe a Lieutenant Scotland? General Mexico? PFC Albania? ‘Cuz if there are, you’d pretty much have it made, even if the Avengers ever broke up. I mean, think about it. Just round up the rest of the chain of command and launch the best version of NATO the planet could ever ask for. No? The look on your face is saying ‘no.’ Among other things.”

“No, to the best of my knowledge, there is not a Lieutenant Scotland or a General Mexico or a PFC Albania.” Steve pinched the bridge of his nose. “Jesus. Can I ask _you_ a question?”

“Sure.” Jones took a swig from the bottle. “Fair’s fair.”

“Why do you _do_ this?”

“What, this?” She gestured at the street below. “Because it’s hilarious. And it makes people happy. And I’ve always wanted to see a Million Elvis March. Or did you mean whatever it is that’s led you to grace me with your presence this evening? Which, by the way, you’re going to have to specify, because I’ve been very busy in the past few months.”

“You could do so much good with the powers you’ve been given, and what do you do instead? Steal, and blow things up, and help criminal organizations and megalomaniacs. Why?”

“Uh, that would be money, Captain.”

“Money,” Steve repeated flatly.

“Money,” Jones repeated, her smile turning sharp. “Profit, lucre, remuneration. Quarterly earnings.” She paused, and her smile turned even sharper. “Except for the stuff I do because it strokes my massive ego and gets people to pay attention to me and makes me feel important. And the stuff I do because it’s some measure of revenge on life for all the unforgivable slights and grave injustices I’ve had to endure as the world’s most special snowflake.”

Steve scowled at her.

“Oh, and there was that one time I stole half of Canada’s strategic maple syrup reserve. I did _that_ because I was worried that I wasn’t the prettiest girl at the party. What can I say? Some ladies paint their nails a new color. I corner the market on breakfast condiments. Nothing like an angry and vaguely confused call from the Ministry of Waffles to make you feel like you’ve still got it.”

“You’re worse than Tony.”

“Stark? God, I’d hope so. I don’t know if you noticed in all the time you’ve been working with him, but he’s nominally a hero. I saw him try to get a kitten out of a tree once and everything. It didn’t wind up working, but, you know, A+ for effort. If I couldn’t swing ‘worse than Stark,’ I’d have to hang up the ring. Or get a day job denying health insurance claims.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Steve protested. 

“Ooooooh. You meant the way he babbles incessantly about annoying things. Gotcha. I don’t think that’s really true, though. It’s like, perception bias. If you think I’m this annoying when I throw you off of things, and he’s almost this annoying when he’s the one rescuing you, he’s probably way more annoying than me to the unbiased observer.” She shook her hips slightly to the strains of “Jailhouse Rock” reaching up from the boulevard. “They get you all caught up on post-war music yet? Fat Elvis and all?”

“That’s not really any of your business.” He felt like he’d blundered into quicksand. He never should have engaged. He should have retreated the second she made him. Phil had been clear on that point. Jones wasn’t actually worse than Tony. She didn’t seem to have any inclination to go in for the emotional kill during a verbal fight. She was just more confusing than Tony, because when she wasn’t doing things like blasting him out of a building six floors from the ground, she was almost likable. Almost. The fact that she might go in for the literal kill at any moment mitigated some of the charm.

“Touchy, touchy.” She rolled her eyes. “So why are you here, anyway? Coulson send you to babysit me? You going to try arresting me again? Is the existence of an alien god named Thor no longer up for debate? Were you dispatched by Fury personally to apologize for that time he hung up on me?”

Steve kept his expression carefully neutral. “Your intel’s a little shaky, there, Jones.”

“I don’t have ‘intel,’ Captain, I have...an Elvis elephant. The fuck is going on down there?” Her eyes were abruptly riveted on the street. “Okay, the hell with this. You’re boring, and there’s an elephant dressed like Elvis, being ridden by more Elvises.” She reached into the bag at her feet. “I’m going down there and enjoying the fruits of my labor. Do me a favor and see that Thor gets this? Tell him it’s from Mimir.”

Jones moved to toss a lump of what looked like gold at him, and Steve backed away quickly, his shield up defensively.

“What are you doing? It’s a fucking apple. An apple like you eat, not like a weird foreign slang term for grenade. Take it, give it to Thor, call it a day. Presumably he’ll know what to do with it. Not rocket science.”

“I’m not taking anything from you, for anyone.” Steve frowned. “You mean you don’t know what to do with it?”

“It’s not for me, and it’s not my field of expertise. Earth-magic only, soldier. Alien bullshit need not apply. It’s powerful, and it’s benevolent, and that’s about as far as I can be persuaded to give a damn. Catch.”

“No!” Steve scrambled back. “Give it to him yourself if it’s so important.”

“Well, you’re worthless,” Jones snorted. “See you later, Commander Hotpants.” She was over the edge and on the street before he could stop her.

*****

Lucy dragged the back of a hand across her forehead, sweat mixing with grime to leave thick streaks across her flushed skin. Leave it to fucking HYDRA to try taking over the city in the middle of the most fun she’d had during a bank robbery in two years, she thought. The hostage negotiator had been flirting shamelessly with her before the all-units call had gone out on account of huge walking death-machines invading the city.

She turned the legs of the nearest battle mech into rubber and caught her breath, grimacing as she fixed the ribs that had been broken when one of its fellows had kicked her through a concrete wall. Magic or not, getting thrown through nine inches of reinforced cement hurt.

The Avengers were trying to keep the bulk of HYDRA’s forces out of heavily-occupied areas, and a few of the local heroes were pitching in with trapped civilians or destabilized buildings, but things were still getting out of hand. There were simply too many mechs, which Lucy thought was interesting in and of itself. HYDRA typically didn’t commit so many forces to an assault without a clear goal, and the only goal evident here was destruction. She tweaked the hydraulics of another mech and swapped the control panel of a third with that of a particularly complex riding lawn mower. The second wobbled into the first, rebounded, and slammed into the third, which had begun walking around in circles. Nothing like getting things a little bit further out of hand.

The rubber-legged mech managed to get a bead on her and land a direct shot with its laser cannon, sending her soaring in a graceful arc over two blocks. She landed on the hood of a Bentley and bounced over the roof, finally coming to rest on the sidewalk in front of a bakery. The day had been going so well until HYDRA had showed up, she thought.

Lucy coughed, got up, and glanced at the two heroes she’d spotted from mid-air. They were crouched against the brick wall to her left, covered in debris, and trying to regroup. She stared at them for a long second before everything clicked into focus. Motherfucking Mimir.

“Huh,” she grunted. “Viking armor, old-style weapons, and serious injuries. I’m guessing you must be Thor.”

He wasn’t what she’d expected, based on the few blurry shots that had made it onto the internet. He was big, definitely, but he was as fat as he was muscular, and the giant beard he was sporting was giving his paunch a run for its money. The color saturation must have been off on the pictures as well; his mane and beard were both fox-red rather than gold-blond. She shrugged mentally as he gaped at her, the bleeding arm he was cradling with his other hand momentarily forgotten. He still looked like he could punch an ox into orbit. The dark-haired woman next to him was gawking at her as well, but the way pain was constricting her features kept Lucy from reading too much into it. They crackled with an odd...radiation? Aura? Magic? She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but it was the same foreign feel Mimir had about him. They didn’t belong, in a fundamental and immutable way. She tossed the Asgardian the apple.

“Compliments of Mimir. Don’t eat it all in one place. Or I guess do, if you’re supposed to? He didn’t say how it works. I just assumed you’d know. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a few foot-soldiers to punch in the face.” She waved and vanished, transporting herself to the cockpit of a lead mech. Good deed for the month, done.

The agents didn’t take long to dispatch, but it wasn’t as exciting as she’d hoped it would be. The mechs were simple robots with little AI to speak of; there was nothing to corrupt and turn against the remaining forces. Simple robots were worthless robots, especially when they were too big to do much of anything interesting with. Doom at least used human-sized robots that could be turned into effective marionettes. AIM used sophisticated bots that could be upgraded slightly until they were capable of indulging in all the usual human quirks, like dereliction of duty, libidinous escapades, demanding vacation days, and complaining about their in-laws. She sighed and settled for turning the mechs’ legs into popsicles.

Lucy floated to the nearest rooftop to survey the results of her handiwork. The summer’s heat was making short work of the machines. She rubbed her knee absently, fixing the damage she’d done crashing into a pilot’s chair when the fight in the cockpit had momentarily sent the mech, and its occupants, careening out of control.

“Jones!”

Lucy groaned. Her name out of Iron Man’s loudspeaker was fast becoming one of her least favorite things to hear. The hero hovered thirty feet above her, his hands up.

“Better get out of the hoses, Stark, or this city will soon be _covered in bees_!” she shouted at him, wriggling her fingers theatrically.

“Coulson needs to see you.”

“Coulson needs to see me? _Now_? About _what_?” Coulson normally put off trying to lecture her about the relative helpfulness of her incidental assists until the damage had been assessed and he had a clear picture of what he was lecturing her about. Or maybe it was about the duck thing. Or the Mr. White thing. Or the Vegas thing. She hadn’t heard from him since the Dr. Thomas thing. Maybe the good Captain had filed a complaint over the shameless ogling. Was that even something heroes could complain about, officially? It seemed like it would be a difficult thing to enforce.

“He didn’t say. He just said to bring you in. Hold still, I’ll give you a lift.”

“Oh, fuck off. I can get there on my own.” She waved him away and considered the agent. It wasn’t difficult to locate him, even less difficult to open a small portal directly to him. He was on another rooftop, a quarter mile away.

“Stark said you wanted to see me?” she said, brushing dust and pulverized concrete off her jacket. “If this is about the Elvis stampede, they were all paid performers--”

She stopped. The problem was obvious. Coulson was crouched over Hawkeye, covered in blood, and slightly dazed. Another Asgardian was off to his left, hovering uselessly and staring at her like she’d grown a second head. Maybe that was just their default expression, she thought. Maybe they all wandered around looking like that all the time. Romanoff was on her comm, demanding medical assistance immediately.

“Can you do something?” Coulson asked softly. Her lips pursed. The blood was mostly Hawkeye’s. His right arm was half torn off, his eyes were glazed over, and he had the distinct look of someone who was checking out. _Breathe_ , she thought. _You’ve got this. You’re the fucking best there is. Best there ever fucking was. This is nothing. You could fix this in your sleep._

“Yeah, probably.” She shrugged and knelt beside him, stupidly proud of the way her voice and hands were both rock steady. She ignored the cold gore soaking into the knees of her jeans and held up two fingers, her left hand surreptitiously curling around the wrist of his injured arm. “Hey, buddy, how many fingers am I holding up?”

Coulson gasped as the shredded flesh, torn sinew, and splintered bone knit back together, skin rolling back over the mangled limb like an incoming tide. The motherfucking best there ever was, never mind the frisson of power rebounding up her own arm like ants under the skin, never mind the way it was draining to have to find the space between somebody else’s injury and pain and pry it open even further, never mind the eye-searing light pouring off Coulson and Romanoff, never mind _anything_ , she was the best.

“Two?” Hawkeye hazarded.

“Congratulations, you can still count.” Lucy clapped him on the repaired arm. He winced slightly, then flexed it, looking blankly at the now-whole limb. She turned to Coulson, who was just watching her, his face pale. She couldn’t say she’d particularly missed the expression that said someone had finally seen too much not to be afraid--really afraid, afraid down to their bones--of her. “He’s still gonna need a pint or two of blood, the sooner the better. And obviously, keep him warm. He’s kind of shocky.”

“You’re leaving?” Coulson asked sharply. 

“Well, I mean, as much as I’d love to hang out and get arrested again by Captain Quixote, that HYDRA sub in the harbor isn’t going to sabotage itself, you know?”

“If you’re going back after HYDRA, I’m coming with you,” Romanoff said firmly. She’d practically materialized at Hawkeye’s other shoulder. The laser focus she’d had when demanding medical assistance had relaxed into something more like a normal battle-readiness.

“Forget it. The passenger function on this bus ain’t ready for prime-time.” She shook her head and stepped away from them. 

The last time she’d tried to take anyone with her, she’d been aiming for New York and landed halfway up a tree ten miles outside Reykjavik with a zombie deity-head. Phil and his sidekick--McMann? McCann? McCain? She couldn’t properly remember the woman’s name.--had been less than thrilled with her even though no real harm had been done. Possibly because neither of them would have survived a fall out of the tree. Lucy didn’t want to think about how he’d react if she accidentally left his favorite murderer on the moon or inside a volcano.

“And you really did your damnedest to stab me a few years back. I mean, the levels of enthusiasm you brought to that job were just uncalled for. So unless you can teleport, you’re not invited.” _Find your own things to hit until you can’t feel anymore. I’ve got dibs on this one._ She stuck her tongue out at the agent and vanished.


	5. Chapter 5

Thor examined the files closely, his thoughts refusing to assume any sort of coherence. Natasha was watching him, waiting for him to say something. She’d been over the same material with him twice now. She clicked play on one of the videos Phil had provided, and Thor let himself be riveted by it, his mind blank. His eyes told him that it was Loki. His instincts told him the same. His heart said “Loki,” while his mind said “Impossible.”

The woman on the screen was, except for her sex, a physical duplicate of his lost brother. Skin the color of ivory, face like a blade, eyes like summer grass, hair like a raven’s wing. Tall and lithe and graceful. She was clearly as finicky about her clothes as Loki had ever been. Sif, Fandral, and Volstagg had all been immovable in their pronouncement that the woman they had seen was most certainly Loki. He would love nothing more dearly than to believe the judgment of his friends, his eyes, and his heart. But. He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. But. 

Loki had been self-possessed and restrained, almost to a fault. It had taken a crisis of great proportions to rob him of that. His movements were studied, careful, and precise. His grace was that of a dancer, his speech that of a diplomat. He’d been overly guarded, even in private, even with his friends. This woman was unrestrained and mercurial and emphatic and undignified and glib. Loki had not always been truthful, but his words had at least been calculated to deceive. This woman’s lies were outrageous and obvious. Her hands, her arms, her face, the line of her body--nothing was ever at rest. Her grace was that of a striking serpent, her speech that of a demagogue.

“Well?” Natasha prompted.

“Pardon?”

“We’ve been watching these all day. What, exactly, are you looking for?”

Thor sighed. “Would you mind giving me your opinion of what we’re seeing?” he asked.

Natasha shrugged but obliged. She hit pause and opened one of the folders.

“Jones is difficult to get a proper read on. Her body language, vocal inflection, and facial mobility generate a lot of noise to the genuine signal. The actual conversation is swamped with useless information, falsehoods, non sequiturs, and tangents. She occasionally pretends idiocy. She’s all over the place. Everything about her presentation is designed to deflect and misdirect.” She flipped through a few more pages. “She’s persistently clocked in as a minor threat. She’s a criminal through and through, but she doesn’t seem to have any grandiose visions about it. She’s capable of a lot more than she generally does, when it comes to fighting. She prefers retreat to combat if a plan has obviously failed, but then she’ll turn around and get into a fight over a petty personal squabble. She has some standards about who she’ll work with, but they’re not high. She holds a hell of a grudge, and she’s creative about how she takes revenge. Even when she’s ‘helping,’ her methodology can be more destructive than the initial threat. Coulson’s been trying to get her to flip for a while now, but honestly we’d all be better off if the ring that gives her her power was dropped into the ocean and lost forever.”

“Her records go back for some time, do they not?”

“First known activity is fifteen years ago. Our records aren’t complete, but she’s been involved in criminal activity to one degree or another for a while. Not that that’s surprising. Her type tend to start young. We haven’t been able to track her back to an organization or a civilian identity, but she probably learned this sort of thing at her parent’s knee.”

Her whole self was a lie. Thor sighed. That was Loki. She was volatile and cunning and vicious and bloodthirsty. That was...not Loki. Not really. He was cunning, and he clung to the memories of wrongs he’d been done, yes, but he had rarely if ever sought out battle. His feuds all had their beginnings in such minor things that the resulting chaos had seemed laughable. He’d needle someone, or pull some prank, and then the response would be slightly out of proportion to his offense, and then his revenge would be petty but still a bit too much, and so it went. Or it came at a time long after it was appropriate to seek retribution for a small affront. Loki loved conflict, but he’d been one to keep himself out of the resulting fray. He’d taken no delight in the clash of arms. This Jones woman loved conflict as well, but she waded into the thick of it, painfully careless of her own physical safety. It was only in battle, in the midst of destruction and chaos, that she seemed to be still, that her intentions and emotions were plain. He rubbed his jaw, lost in thought.

“You you mind sharing whatever theory you’re working on?” Natasha asked after a moment.

“I think she may be my lost brother.”

“Okay, that needs a little more explanation, Thor.” Her brows were furrowed, and skepticism tinged her face.

“I don’t know if I can offer one. My brother, Loki, was also a sorcerer. The fight which broke the Bifrost and the fight which came to Midgard, they were not properly magical in nature. But he was a sorcerer, and a powerful one. This woman...” He spread his hands. His companions had described it as seeing a ghost when she’d appeared during the battle with HYDRA. They’d been admittedly confused by her calling Volstagg Thor, but there had been no mistaking her. “She is the image and substance of my brother.”

“You think he’s changed his shape and taken up residence here? In spite of the time-frame?”

“I don’t know. She’s been here for some time, obviously. He only fell two years ago. But I cannot dismiss the similarities. Magic is not something I have ever been able to fully explain.”

Natasha rubbed her temples. “Right. A wizard did it.”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing.” She sighed. “Your brother was responsible for the Destroyer’s appearance in New Mexico. Jones was, at the time, causing problems of a different sort with a similar threat. That seems like a stretch, even for sorcery.”

“You said her powers derive from the ring she wears?”

“According to all our sources, she’s powerless without it. We’ve never gotten it off her or been able to tell what’s powering the ring, though, so it can’t be absolutely confirmed.”

Thor put his face in his hands, thinking. There had been stories told of great wizards hiding their hearts or their souls inside objects, hadn’t there? There had even been one story, he was sure, of a wizard hiding the heart of a great warrior inside something--an acorn? an egg?--so that the warrior could not die. Jones could be a mortal woman who had blundered onto his brother’s heart, his brother’s power. A mortal woman whose life Loki had commandeered to serve his own purposes. Or she could be Loki himself, hiding in plain sight. He could have his brother back. He sighed.

“I need to meet with her, Natasha. Can it be arranged?”

*****

Lucy lounged back on the warm sand, her eyes closed and her limbs loose. There was a cool breeze coming off the water, and the setting sun meant that most people were packing up and going home. It had been a glorious day, and, if the nice waitress she’d chatted up at the diner across the street kept her promise to stop by after her shift ended, it promised to be a glorious night. Her phone rang, breaking her reverie. She stuck a hand in her beach bag and groped around for it, finding it by the third ring.

“Yeah?”

“Jones?”

Coulson. Her eyes snapped open, and she jerked herself up onto her elbows, scanning the area intently, all languor gone. There was nothing of concern, she decided, but she didn’t relax.

“Speaking,” she said finally. She sat up completely, resting her elbows on her knees and keeping a close eye on the horizon.

“It’s Coulson.”

“Agent,” she chirped, her tone bright and false. “What can I do for you today? Destabilize a foreign government? Smite one of your rivals with gout? Seduce Deputy Director Hill?”

“I wanted to thank you for what you did for Cl--for Hawkeye.”

“I live but to serve.”

“I’m serious, Jones. It means a lot to me.”

“Okay, so you know how I handle emotional moments with the maturity and grace of a little girl with a spider in her hair? Just humor me the next time I do that at you and call it even.”

“I didn’t know you could heal people.”

“You remember that clusterfuck in Biloxi?”

“The one where you assaulted half a precinct with hallucinogenic toads?”

“It was a half-dozen cops at best. And aside from the fact that I categorically deny all knowledge of the incident in question, yes, the very same. You remember how it started?”

“You crashed a tent revival.”

“I did not. The tent revival crashed my drinking-and-gambling binge.”

“Is this going somewhere, Jones?”

“You called me, you can put up with my fabulously entertaining anecdotes. Also? I am revealing some deeply secret ancient wisdom here, you mundane peasant, you should feel honored at being privy to it, not checking your fucking watch and tapping fucking your foot like you’ve got something better to do. The last splinter of that HYDRA cell that went rogue and tried to take over New York isn’t going anywhere, I promise you, and if they _do_ happen to _try_ to go somewhere, you’re going to see them from that oh-so-comfortable vantage point you’re camped out on right now.” She sighed heavily. “Anyway, as I was _saying_ , that tent revival started it. They had a faith-healer with them who wasn’t the real deal, but he’d sold them on the idea of it being possible so fucking thoroughly that...it was kind of like being a lightning rod. I mean, it was a literal revelation. The knowledge of how to do that went from being out there somewhere, floating in the ether, to being written on my nerves, in the second it took that expectation to coalesce and fixate on the nearest conduit. It was like a switch being flipped. First time I’ve ever had anything like that happen without, uh, _literally_ getting struck by lightning.”

Lucy frowned at the legion of fiddler crabs that had assembled in front of her. She hadn’t noticed them until they’d formed ranks. They stared at her silently, their eye stalks swiveled in her direction and their attention riveted on her. “Go away,” she mouthed at them.

“You still there?” she asked irritably.

“Yes. That was unexpectedly serious, Jones.”

“I’m just a box of chocolates that way, Coulson. Did you only call me to say thanks for saving your favorite government assassin, or is this a prelude to something a little less sappy? Am I about to be sniped from a Cold War murder-satellite that officially never existed? Do you actually need me to seduce the deputy director? I’ll give you a substantial discount off my usual rates if that’s what you need.”

“That’s a little inappropriate, Jones.”

“Only a little? I’m losing my edge.” The fiddler crabs advanced a few inches, and Lucy waved her hands at them. “Shoo! Scat! Beat it, you weird little crustaceans.”

“What?”

“Not you. Some of the local wildlife is having issues.”

“Do me a favor and please don’t go into detail,” Coulson said. “I’m reasonably certain that Hill would shoot to kill if you hit on her. We’re not interested in hiring you. I’m only calling to say thank you.”

“You’re welcome. You’re also welcome--”

“Don’t push it,” he warned.

“--for the gloriously disabled submarine I left you.”

“You shut down the port for a week.”

“You’re welcome for that, too. I mean, the port was full of international terrorists. What good was it doing anybody?”

“I’m trying to be nice. Why do you have to ruin everything?” he groused.

“Emotional grace of a panicking child,” she reminded him, swatting at the advancing tide of tiny crabs. “I’d think you’d be at least a little used to it by now. I mean, between the Hulk, Stark, and Romanoff, I’d honestly expect you to be handing out gold stars like a kindergarten teacher.”

“Agent Romanoff is a model of professionalism.”

“Which I would think, given Stark’s... _everything_ , would be an accomplishment worthy of at least some acknowledgement, even if it does take the form of a sticker. Half the time, I feel like I deserve a gold sticker for only disabling half his thrusters or switching JARVIS to a language he’s not fluent in but does speak. She has to refrain from killing him _and_ handle the paperwork for whatever she’s not killing him over.”

“Jones.” Lucy could hear him reaching for a bottle of aspirin on the other end of the line. The closest crabs climbed onto her feet.

“You know, as much as you want to say thank you...it was you and Romanoff that provided a lot of the impetus,” she blurted. “I don’t know if you can really _understand_ what I’m telling you. I know you didn’t really get what I said about Biloxi. I mean, I try not to look too hard at this stuff myself, because I’m afraid of drowning in it. But the way you two wanted him to be okay, with everything you had, that much will behind it....” She trailed off for a moment. “You made it way easier for me to turn that into a reality. I guess it just seemed like something you should know. That you two were a big part of it. You helped.” Lucy swallowed, staring at the crabs. “I should go. These crabs are being really, really weird, and I think I need to fix something here, because crabs don’t usually act like this without a really good reason. Catch you later, Coulson.”

She hung up. “Okay, you little assholes, I just feelings-barfed all over someone I’d have preferred not to. You have my attention. _What is your fucking problem_?”

They kept their eyes on her, unmoving, their chitinous feet prickling her bare skin. She felt the same strange compulsion to talk, to speak truly, that she hadn’t caught in time to prevent herself from going completely full-disclosure on Coulson. She carefully pushed them off, nodding to herself when the sensation vanished as soon as they were no longer touching her.

“You’re going to have to be a little more communicative than that,” Lucy snapped. “Unless you’re all here to teach me some sort of bullshit life lesson about being honest with people, in which case I’m going to feed you all to the seagulls. I will find a bunch of seagulls, and I will feed you to them.”

The crabs retreated, still in formation, and began moving further down the beach, away from the few lingering couples. Lucy got to her feet and brushed the sand off. The wind was getting colder. She rolled the cuffs of her thin cotton pants down to mid-shin and chafed her arms, then trudged after the crabs, feeling sullen and cranky. She’d intended to be lighting the grill by now. They eventually led her to a small, old pier. At the far end, framed by the water and the sun’s dying light, was a tall, thin man dressed as a pirate. He was also wearing a wizard’s cap and leaning on a heavy staff with a glass ball set in its head. He looked more than a little surprised to see her.

Lucy felt her jaw drop open. She looked down at the crabs. “Is this guy for real?”

“Shit, you’re early,” he muttered, almost to himself. He pulled himself together and boomed, “Are you not awed to be in the presence of The Pirate Enchanter?”

She rubbed her eyes. Yes, she was really seeing this. She pinched herself. Not dreaming. This was really happening. She was going to feed _everybody_ to the seagulls.

“That’s not a real thing,” she called back, moving onto the foot of the dock. “And I mean either way to interpret it. You’re not a pirate, and you don’t enchant pirates. It’s made-up bullshit. You look like a complete idiot.”

“I, uh...Tremble before the might of The Pirate Enchanter?”

“Are you issuing a command or making a request? If you hadn’t managed to be incredibly annoying already with your stupid minions, I wouldn’t even dignify this with a response. That’s how bad you are at this.”

“The Pirate Enchanter takes exception to your effrontery!”

“And you’re talking about yourself using the third person. You’re talking about yourself in the third person, while dressed like that, and leading an army of fiddler crabs. I take exception to _everything about this situation_.” The seagulls were too good for him. She was going to feed him to a pelican. 

“Fiddler crabs?”

“Tiny little crabs that live in holes on the beach? The males have one arm that’s way bigger than the other because...you aren’t registering any of this, are you?”

He looked at her, his empty face confirming that he wasn’t following her. “I don’t have an army of fiddler crabs.”

“Don’t you mean ‘The Pirate Enchanter doesn’t have an army of fiddler crabs’?”

“Look, I’m trying to start a fight here. I’m a supervillain! I’m an enchanter! I’m better than you, and I’m out to prove it!”

“Okay, buddy, here’s the thing,” Lucy spat, her eyes flicking over the sand, looking for the crabs. They had retreated to their burrows and were peering out at her. “Seriously?” She pointed angrily at them. “You are _seriously_ going to stand there and tell me these are not your fucking crabs, and they’re just all doing this on their own? That is legitimately a thing you are going to stand there and do?”

“I don’t know what you want from me,” he insisted. “I don’t know anything about any crabs! I’m just trying to get a good brawl in and get my name out there and impress your contacts!”

“Fucking hell.” Lucy’s eyes narrowed. “I’m going to deal with him, and then I’m coming back and finishing this up with you bastards,” she snarled at them. She turned back to him. “As I was saying, here’s the thing. You’ve already started the fight. We’re going to fight. My night is ruined, and I have the sneaking suspicion I’ve been tricked by a bunch of invertebrates, and I have a powerful urge to take it out on someone who’s got it coming based solely on his sartorial choices. But I’m going to do us _both_ a favor and give you a second to rethink the whole pirate-wizard motif you’ve got going, because this? This is some constructed-without-reference-material bullshit you couldn’t have gotten away with in the ‘60s, never mind right now. If I took a picture of this and emailed it to your mother, she would disown you.”

“Hey, I put a lot of thought into this! Pirates are very hot right now!”

“So help me, if you mention ninjas while I’m still in earshot, I’m going to make you eat that hat.”

“I...wasn’t going to,” he mumbled.

“What’s your fucking name, anyway?”

“The Pirate--”

“Your real name, douchebag. I’m not calling you The Pirate Enchanter. It’s not fucking happening.”

He scowled at her. “My name is Timothy.”

“Timothy,” she repeated flatly, her eyes boring holes in his face. “Are you fucking with me.”

“No! I am a serious supervillain! I am going to be taken seriously! You’re going to regret everything you’ve said tonight!” he screamed.

“You’re Tim the Enchanter.” Lucy pinched the bridge of her nose. She was surrounded by fools and the unwashed, she had just been crowned their queen, and the universe was laughing at her.

“Yes?”

“You are _Tim the motherfucking Enchanter_.”

“Why do you keep saying it like that?” he asked.

“Tim, your need to ask me that demonstrates quite conclusively that you are unworthy of the title.” She flashed him her best ‘we’re not friends’ smile. “But, and this is the best thing about living in a meritocracy, you can _aspire_ to be worthy. So what we’re going to do is get you into a more appropriate outfit.” She waved her hands, and his pirate costume and hat were replaced with a long robe in black and red and a close-fitting hood with ram’s horns. “And we’re going to try to have a proper fucking fight, like we would if you weren’t hopelessly outclassed and laughably outgunned.”

“How did you even...?” He opened and shut his mouth soundlessly a few times as he tried to process his costume change. “I’m not sure I want to do this anymore.”

“Too late, Tim.” Her hands curled into fists and came alight with green fire. Tim shuffled back to the very end of the pier, his face a few shades paler than it had been.

“Maybe I need to work on this some more. Somewhere else. Somewhere that’s not here.”

“En garde!”

Tim scrambled to dodge a bolt of fire aimed at his head. He hit back with a wave of energy that Lucy barely felt and easily deflected. She tried not to dwell on the idea of how ridiculous she must look in the field if this turkey thought he was a match for her as she wrenched the pier out from under him, cracking it like a whip. The look of shock on his face as he was launched into the water was almost enough to drive her to despair. Levitation was not a difficult skill to master. He floundered in the surf and dropped his staff. Swimming was also not a difficult skill to master.

“Jones!” Lucy cringed at the sound of Iron Man’s thrusters. It was bad enough that she was actually fighting this idiot. Being caught on film fighting this idiot was intolerable. She quietly fried his cameras’ lenses as he touched down behind her.

“I’m a little busy here, Stark,” she bit out.

“I figure you’ve got a few minutes before he makes it back to shore. Plenty of time to talk,” he replied, his tone smarmy even filtered through the machine.

“Talk about what? I’m not letting you arrest me.”

“Thor--you know, big guy, from Asgard, kind of a god--wanted to have a little chat with you.”

“Really? That’s great. Tell him to go fuck himself.” Lucy watched Tim as he kicked back to the edge of the dock. She doubted he even appreciated how much skill it took to send a ripple through a solid object without damaging it, never mind a structure composed of discrete objects.

“Why don’t you come with me? That way, you could tell him in person.”

“Look, that apple was from another kind-of-a-god called Mimir. I was just the errand boy in this case. He wants to meet anyone, it’s probably Mimir. And Coulson can take him to see Mimir himself as soon as he gets his foot back out of HYDRA’s ass. No need to include me.” Tim finally managed to pull himself back out of the water. He spent another minute trying to grab his staff. Lucy sighed. Retrieval was even less difficult than levitation. “And, as you can see, I have some _incredibly pressing concerns_ here.”

“Really? This qualifies as incredibly pressing?”

“Of course. Left to his own devices, he could put an eye out. Or try to iron a shirt while he’s wearing it. Or lock himself inside his car. He’s clearly too dangerous a man to be left unchallenged.”

“I never thought I’d say this, Jones, but I’m disappointed in you,” Stark said, feigning indignation. “I thought we had something special, and here you are, fighting with and mocking another hero.”

“Psht. This is a turf fight. He’s a villain. And what do you mean, you thought we had something special? I’ve never been a one-hero kind of girl. Hell, I don’t even restrict myself to heroes. As you can see, I’ll fight anybody.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and raised her voice so that Tim could hear her clearly. “Even people who aren’t really worth it!”

“I will not be insulted by the likes of you!” Tim shouted, waving his staff menacingly. He doubled over coughing.

“Too late!” she yelled.

“This fucking guy,” Lucy spat, turning to Stark. “Can you fucking believe this fucking guy? I take back everything I ever said about Pym being the most useless bastard I’ve ever met. At least if you've got him in your corner you never have to get your house tented.”

Tim straightened up and repeated the trick with the energy field. Lucy sighed, parrying it effortlessly. It picked Stark up and slammed him bodily into the line of palmetto bushes behind them. Maybe Tim wasn’t as useless as all that, after all, she thought. If she was lucky, it had disabled his speakers.

“Do you know anything flashier than that?” she asked. “Because I feel compelled to point out that if we wanted to be boring, we could just stick to assault rifles and skip all the arcane investigation and occult exploration and years of dedication to the craft.”

“Go to hell!”

“That’s the best idea you’ve had all day, Tim,” she howled. “Sure! Let’s have a field trip to hell. Maybe you’ll come up with something that’s a net contribution to the aetheric field!” She grinned and raised her arms. “Take your last breath of air untainted by the stench of sulfur!”

A circle of chartreuse flame erupted around him, and he fell screaming into darkness.

“Uh, Jones? You didn't really send him to hell, did you?” Stark demanded, stumbling out of the scrub.

“Nah. He’s getting spit out of the baggage claim in Newark right about now.”

“I think I'm required by the SHIELD charter to defend New Jersey's honor now.” He tapped his helmet a few times, then shook his head sharply. “Packed kind of a punch, didn’t he?”

“What, that love-tap? If that’s enough to shake you up, maybe you should leave the wizard-fights to Captain America and his magic ass.”

“For one thing, you don’t hit that hard. For another thing, aren’t you gay?”

“I’m not _that_ gay, Stark, and I don’t hit _you_ that hard, because the only thing more fragile than your ego is your billion-dollar, rocket-powered vanity project.” Lucy stretched. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I might conceivably have a date, and I’m definitely overdue for dinner.”

“I don’t think so. There are about twenty active warrants out for you right now, and Thor wants to talk to you. All that adds up to you coming with me.”

“I already explained this to you,” she snapped. “Not. Gonna. Happen.”

“You say that, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to win this time.” He darted forward and scooped her up, jetting forward to hover over the water. 

Lucy twisted out of his arms and jumped, landing cleanly. She clenched her right hand and realized that he’d managed to get the ring off when he’d tried to keep ahold of her.

“Shit.” She treaded water and looked up at him, grimacing. “Give that back, Stark!”

“Nope! I guess you can stay here and make that date after all, Jones! At least, you know, until the cops swing by and pick you up.” He laughed and took off, cheering to himself halfway back to New York.

“Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck.” Lucy shook herself and swam back to shore. The crabs were waiting. “Are you happy now, you ten-legged weasels?”


	6. Chapter 6

Lucy popped the tab on another can of beer, leaned back against the picnic table, and watched her dinner cook on the grill. The waitress wasn’t coming. Stark had jacked her ring. There was no way to get it back from SHIELD without either some fairly obvious magical assists or a lot of heavy artillery and a little help from her friends, most of whom weren’t really friends and would stop returning her calls as soon as they thought she was depowered. The surf pounded behind her, just out of sight over the dunes. So, two viable options: ditch the ruse and keep on rolling like nothing had happened, or go into stealth mode until an opportunity presented itself to reclaim the ring. She drummed her fingers absently. The perception that the ring was the source of her power had served her well--very well--in the past. She was unwilling to let it go unless the lie became untenable. And, of course, she could always change her mind about keeping the secret. Once she’d revealed herself as a real magician, she’d be committed. There was no taking the truth back.

Conversely, she had nothing compelling that needed doing in the next few months. No jobs to finish, no appearances to put in, no appointments to keep. She could change her appearance, stay under the radar for a while, make a plan, and get the ring back. She’d had to do it before; it was surprisingly easy to hide when nobody was really tearing anything apart looking for her. SHIELD would be on the look-out for her, doubtless--Stark’s promised cops had already been by twice--but she wouldn’t be too high up on their list of priorities, especially if they remained convinced she’d been demoted to “petty nuisance.” They definitely wouldn’t be looking for, say, a short, chubby blonde with a pocket-full of cash on a low-rent cross-country road-trip. 

Lucy flipped the steak and turned the potato, lingering close to the heat of the fire. She sipped the beer and closed her eyes for a moment. It had been a while since she’d indulged in any sort of idleness, and it had been even longer since she’d just gone wandering. The idea had a nostalgic appeal to it. She’d spent most of her formative years knocking around with no plan, letting one adventure lead naturally into the next. It might be nice to go back to doing just that for a bit. She plucked a quartered bunch of broccoli from the cooler and deposited it on the grill, positioning it carefully so that it cooked but didn’t burn. She’d learned most of her best tricks meandering across the globe. It had been profitable. It had been fun. She could do worse than go back to it. She nodded to herself. Option two, then.

She ate in silence, considering the direction in which she would strike out. West? She’d never been to Oregon or Washington. North? She’d never ridden a moose. South? She hadn’t seen Jorge in almost five years. They could cheat each other at cards, and she could annoy the old gods’ guardian who lingered nearby Jorge’s enclave by refusing to fight him again. East, into the ocean, to ride the whales again. She smiled. That had been...something. Really something. Fat chance of keeping an ear to the ground from the middle of the Atlantic, though. After she’d gotten the ring back, then. Further east, to talk to Mimir, to see if she could get him to spill on just what the fuck had gone down between Thor and past-her? Or would it be not-her? 

She wasn’t even sure how to think of it anymore. She still felt stupid for having expected some spark of recognition when she’d seen him. Wishful thinking, and she knew it. That wasn’t how reincarnation worked. _She_ , the self that existed in the presence, had never seen him before. Why would she recognize him? It was like expected the river to still be green just because it had once been St. Patrick’s Day. The momentary kick to the gut she’d felt when Stark had crashed the party and talked about going to see him...she recognized that, though. Guilt, anger, and defensiveness, all wrapped up together in an ugly, rotten bundle. Laying low was a good idea no matter what. She had enough people she’d failed or fucked over that she couldn’t apologize to that it occasionally made her terminally stupid over whoever was left standing, and it looked like this was shaping up to be one of those times. 

Lucy sighed and rubbed her temples. Fucking Mimir. She needed to get better at not letting people push her buttons. She should have chucked the apple into the ocean and told him to fuck off. It didn’t even matter if she really believed him. She’d proven time and again that she’d fall for a suitably convincing illusion. Her wits were too sharp for her own good, but her heart was a treasonous liar with bad judgment. Trusting it wasn’t safe. She knew that. And still she’d gone for the bait the second a decapitated god she’d met by accident had said the words “family” and “debt,” like wiping out something she hadn’t even known about before would make her sleep any better at nights. Who had she been trying to fool, thinking that so long as she didn’t have to meet him, everything would be fine? She was _lucky_ he’d just been another weird stranger having a bad day courtesy of even weirder science, and she knew damn well that she wasn’t lucky _enough_ to keep playing with this particular fire without getting burned. Lucy finished her beer. Sometimes she thought it was a miracle she hadn’t gotten herself killed yet.

“The better part of valor is discretion,*” she muttered, “and the bard’s advice to cowards is ever sound.”

Another police patrol circled around, oblivious to her presence. They were alert, on guard, looking for her; it was much more difficult to suppress their perception than it was to show a security guard or nosy neighbor what they wanted to see. It would be easier to move on and fix her appearance, and moping in a beach pavilion certainly wasn’t helping anything.

Lucy cleaned up the pavilion and extinguished the fire. It was already well past soon enough to get a head start on anyone. Stark would have radioed ahead to let SHIELD know he’d gotten the ring away from her practically as soon as he’d done it. She checked in to one of the beachfront motels catering to budget tourists, took a quick shower to get the lingering salt and sand off her skin, and considered herself in the full-length bathroom mirror. 6’1”, rail thin, milk-pale skin, long black hair, too-sharp features, and green eyes. She was thirty but looked a bit older. As she was, she stood out in a crowd. Time to fix that, she thought. 

She didn’t normally mess with her appearance too much, not beyond the standard magician conceit of keeping herself perpetually coifed, neat, and pressed. Maintaining it took a certain level of power and concentration, both of which were generally needed by far more interesting things. This time, she figured she might as well go for broke. She gathered her power and focused on the image she wished to fit herself to. The woman in the mirror blurred, rippled, and was transformed into someone else. Someone who was 5’5”, stocky and well-muscled, with pleasantly rounded curves. Someone whose skin was warm and golden from the sun and dusted with freckles. Someone whose honey blonde hair hung just past her shoulders. Someone whose soft features and rounded face made her look maybe twenty-five. Someone whose eyes were the same damn dragonfly green.

Lucy snorted. She’d never been able to do a fucking thing about her eyes. The green of her irises was persistent in a way the rest of her could never match. Not that it should matter much now. She took a deep breath and raised a thin black line on her skin, tracing a coiling, complicated loop between her shoulder blades. It siphoned in a tiny shred of her magic, making the change self-sustaining and surprise-proof. Absolutely no one was going to look at her like this and flag her as Lucy Jones. So long as she didn’t try to take a stroll through SHIELD headquarters or apply for a job with HYDRA, nobody was going to catch on. She pulled her now-short hair into a perky little ponytail and reworked her clothes into something that would fit her new body. She should probably go for a new look, too. California casual sounded...well, not _good_. But fitting. And easy to pick up in a beach town. Going _to_ California sounded unreservedly good. She could take a tour through the sun belt on the way, then go stomping through Death Valley and get a good look at the sailing stones. 

She smiled at her new reflection and, as an afterthought, made her teeth just the tiniest bit crooked and slapped a thicker band of freckles across her nose and cheekbones. Suck on that, BOLO alerts.

*****

Tony groaned and threw up his hands in frustration. Thor peered over his shoulder, frowning.

“What is the matter, Tony?” he rumbled softly, his brows furrowing.

“This ring is the matter.” Tony heaved a sighed. “There is, scientifically speaking, nothing special about this thing. At all. No weird energy signatures, no strange alloys, no anomalous readings. If I mixed it up with a bunch of other tacky jewelry, you’d never be able to pick it out of the box.”

“That is most disappointing, but not entirely unexpected. My brother’s magics are most cunning. I have summoned an enchantress who may be able to provide some insight into the mechanism by which it operates.”

“And I’ve got Reed Richards stopping by tomorrow to take a look at my results and run a few tests of his own. We’ll figure this out, Thor.”

“I appreciate your efforts, my friend. It is a shame the young woman ensnared by this sorcery was unwilling to accompany you. She may still be suffering from its effects, and she should be cared for.”

“Don’t worry too much about it. I’m sure the police will find her soon. Now that she doesn’t have this behind her, she’s not going to be at large long.” Tony ran his fingers through his hair. “I just wish I could make heads or tails of this. You said Asgardian science and magic are unified, but so far I’m running into a wall.”

“It may need to be worn to manifest itself.” Thor’s expression turned thoughtful. “If you wish, I could try putting it on.”

“That might not be the best idea, Thor,” Natasha said quickly, looking up from the display she was monitoring. “If it’s capable of possessing whoever tries to use it...”

“Excellent point,” Tony agreed. “The magician who likes smashing my stuff putting in a new appearance in the middle of my best lab would be bad news. We should move a few things onto the roof and try it there.”

“Tony!”

“I believe I can contain my brother, should it come to that,” Thor told her.

“The last time you saw him, he tried to kill you,” Natasha reminded him.

“He was not himself, Natasha. He was unhinged by grief and the shock of his true parentage. If I had been there to steady him--”

“It’s still not a chance you should be taking. Not until your expert has had a chance to look at it.”

Thor deflated slightly. “I understand your concern. We will wait.”

“Spoilsport,” Tony grunted, turning back to the offensively benign object in question. “I bet Phil would let us do it.”

“Feel free to ask him, then,” she said sweetly. “Just as soon as he gets back from assignment. In another couple of weeks.”

“The joy you take in setting me up just to knock me back down is unseemly, Widow.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Stark.” Tony scowled at her, and she beamed at him. “I’m just stating the facts.”

“Really, though, how hard could it be? Jones managed to figure it out, and she can barely walk a straight line half of the time.”

“That’s assuming that Jones was nominally in control of this,” Natasha pointed out. “We don’t know anything about her from before she had the ring. She may have been a normal kid before she put it on, and it’s been running the show the whole time.” Tony snorted. “I know, I know. I wouldn’t put money on it, but it’s a possibility. You should also consider that encounter with the other magician. You remember, when someone she beat with one hand tied behind her back tossed you around like a ragdoll?”

Tony made a face at her. “He never would have gotten that far if I’d been aware of what I was getting into before I engaged.”

“A mistake you seem strangely intent on repeating,” she said archly.

“Friends, please,” Thor cut in. “I fear this artifact may already be having some effect on us. Calm yourselves.”

Tony and Natasha locked eyes, then deliberately relaxed and turned back to their respective tasks.

“Sorry,” Tony muttered. “You’re right. We have too many variables for this to be safe.”

“I’m glad you’ve come to your senses.” Tony rolled his eyes, and she ignored it.

Clint tapped a pen against the paperwork he was nominally filling out.

“You know,” he finally ventured, “it seems like the easiest thing would be to just find Jones and ask her. Her career’s over, she’s looking at a stack of felony charges a mile high, and she’s made more than a few really dangerous enemies. She’s going to be looking to make a deal, and pretty much the only thing she’s got is either how to use that ring or the excuse that she doesn’t remember anything. You’ve got the cops looking for her, okay, but maybe we should put out the word that we’re willing to work with her. Maybe she’d come to us, save us some time.”

“Not a bad idea,” Tony admitted. “Natasha?”

“I have no problem with finding her sooner rather than later,” she said with a shrug. “Send it up the chain.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Henry IV, Part I. V.iv.120-121.


	7. Chapter 7

Lucy looked at the grenades in her hands, wondering precisely where her idyllic little vacation had disappeared to. Two pairs of footsteps rattled along the grating above her. She pulled the pins out, tossed them, and dove for cover. Cover she didn’t particularly need, but it didn’t hurt to keep up appearances. The explosion blew out every window in the building, reduced those two particular henchmen to hamburger, and left her picking bits of hired goon out of her hair. She groaned. She hated grenades, but they had been the only useful thing left on the corpse of the first mercenary she’d shot tonight. They were too messy and too noisy; the blast had also drawn the rest of them to investigate. She needed to find their boss, and she needed to make him tell her how the _fuck_ they kept finding her. If nothing else, leaving a pile of dead mercs behind wherever she went was going to have SHIELD breathing down her neck. 

She’d had a quiet trip until Louisiana, at which point her life had turned into a non-stop game of murder-tag, with seemingly every nasty motherfucker she’d ever hit back or refused to work for or reined in hard coming out of the woodwork with the express intention of finishing her off. As much as she’d altered her appearance, there was no way they’d made her off surveillance or happenstance. After the first attempt, she’d been more circumspect about travelling, to no avail. It was like they had a GPS directing them right to wherever she happened to be, which she found rather unlikely. She knew they were getting pretty advanced, but she was reasonably sure they still couldn’t give directions to abstract concepts like ‘revenge’ or ‘true love.’ And convenient as it might be to preempt every knife waiting for her to turn her back, this was not what she had planned on doing with her time. 

Lucy bit her lip, thinking. She could feel the crew leader crouched behind a half-demolished brick wall on the other side of the courtyard. She recognized his aura. She’d met him before. He’d done wetwork for HYDRA before striking out as an independent contractor. She’d never crossed him directly; this had to be a paying job. She slipped out the back door as the rest of the squad burst through the front, leaving a primed grenade belt to take care of them. She kept the building between the leader’s position and herself, then darted to the wall and pulled herself over. She could circle around him now, stick to the shadows, and take him by surprise. He was in it for the money; there was no way he’d prefer taking a bullet to talking. She drew her gun and got as close as stealth would take her, then threw a rock over the wall, aiming carefully for just past his location. He sprang into action, moving quickly to cover the source of the sound, and she slipped up behind him.

“Drop it and put your hands up,” she snapped. He stiffened and then reluctantly let his weapon fall. She plucked his sidearm and another grenade from his belt and tossed them behind her, then kicked away the uzi he’d dropped and fell back a pace. “Turn around, and get down on your knees.”

He obeyed slowly, his face sullen.

“Okay, buddy, I want to know how you people keep finding me. None of you fucksticks are good enough to do this on your own.”

“I’m not telling you nothing.”

“I’m not above shooting you in both legs and leaving you to crawl for help,” she said cheerily.

He scowled. “My boss gave me this thing. It works like a compass. Said it would lead us to you.”

“Who’d your boss get it from?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“Probably not the answer you want to be giving right about now,” she cautioned him, her eyes glinting. “You still got it on you?”

“Yeah.” His hand moved to his pocket.

“ _Slowly_ ,” she snarled, keeping her gun pointed square at his chest. “Very, very slowly.”

He pulled out a small medallion that did indeed look like a compass. She recognized the work, but not the intent behind it. She’d never given Morgan le Fay cause for any sort of ill feeling. The list of motives she could come up with began and ended with ‘to be an asshole.’ What the hell was the half-elf wench playing at?

“Okay, guy, let’s try this again. So somebody makes this thing, and then what? Approaches your boss with it? Offers to sell it? Or did your boss commission it? Is your boss working with anyone else? Because I gotta tell you, I have been doing a _lot_ of this in the past week. And given how hard you people typically find it to come up with one workable-if-bad idea in any given time frame, I find it really, really difficult to believe that you all had the same idea at the same time independently of each other.”

“I don’t know anything. I got the call, boss had a job, end of story. He didn’t say why, or who else was involved, and I didn’t ask.”

“So you basically come with less information than a standard smart missile. Good to know. Are you staring at my tits?” she demanded, exasperated.

His eyes snapped back to her face. “No!”

“Dude, I just wiped out your whole fucking crew, and you’re staring at my tits. I mean, admittedly, they’re great tits, but I’ve met lemmings with better sense than that. Your whole crew, dude. Dead.” With the exception of the one who had been in charge of tech support, who was now trying and failing to sneak up behind her.

He shrugged. “They were a pick-up team.”

“Not exactly the point I was trying to make, douchebag. It's like you're actively trying for a closed-casket funeral,” Lucy snapped. “So, you don’t know anything else. Great. Who’s your boss?”

“Not telling.” He grinned at her, and her patience finally ran out. The lone back-up goon coming up behind her tripped over something that hadn’t been there a moment before and twisted her ankle badly. He lunged at her as his would-be rescuer went sprawling, and Lucy shot him twice in the chest. He wound up on the ground, twitching and clutching at the impact site. Even with a vest, getting shot hurt like hell. He’d be feeling that for a while. Lucy snatched up the compass and stuffed it in her pocket She might be able to short out the rest if they’d been made in a batch, or baffle the spell if she could tease it apart.

“Fucking cockmongers,” she hissed to herself. “I am just going to set everything on fire and go live with the polar bears.” She raised her voice so that he could hear her. “Consider yourself lucky I don’t finish you off right fucking here.”

His comrade picked herself up and began hobbling toward him, and Lucy ran for their truck. It’d likely be some time before they reported their failure; he’d want to be mobile and in fighting shape again in case a mop-up team was dispatched to make an example out of them. She hotwired the truck and tore off. If she could get some breathing room, she could get a good look at this new bit of grit in the gears and come up with a plan for taking care of it.

*****

Lucy leaned back and let her eyes sweep the crowded dance floor appreciatively. She’d finally gotten the compasses disabled. Granted, it had taken a hijacked particle accelerator and a crate of non-dairy creamer, but she’d done it. How le Fay had managed to wreak so much havoc with one drop of her blood was still something of a mystery, but she’d picked up a few _very_ clever ideas from the construction of the artifact. Why le Fay had _wanted_ to wreak so much havoc in the first place, on the other hand, remained a complete mystery. Lucy could only assume there were some obscure immortal jerkoff reasons to which she was not privy. It wasn’t completely beyond credibility that she’d stomped on Morgan’s fragile faerie toes by accident in the process of wrecking somebody else’s day, but nothing sprang immediately to mind. 

The bass beat of a new song made the entire club throb, and some of the dancers on the floor cheered. Lucy smiled into her drink. She needed to stay on her guard, but she hadn’t had to dodge any attempted assassinations since ambushing the last two from a hospital bed. Faking a serious injury for a surveillance camera and then checking in with a minor injury and waiting for the inevitable follow-up with a pair of pistols ready to go had turned out to be a surprisingly effective tactic. The shift nurses had not been best pleased by the result, though.

Lucy locked eyes with a tall brunette from across the floor. The woman smiled, then looked away shyly. When Lucy smiled back, she motioned for her to come over, miming a few exaggerated dance moves. She grinned. Things were looking up, indeed. She made her way over to the woman, shimmying through the crowd and sidling up to her. The short red dress clung to her curves and emphasized every move she made. After a few songs, she pulled Lucy close and murmured something that might have been a name in her ear, then asked if she wanted to go someplace more private.

It seemed only natural that the ‘someplace more private’ had turned out to be a motel room full of assassins. Lucy sighed. The prick obviously calling the shots was even wearing an eyepatch. She supposed it was at least something that he didn’t have a white cat in his lap or an extraneous cyborg bodyguard or a henchwoman in a ridiculously impractical and revealing uniform.

“The thing that sets me apart from most of my colleagues is that I believe in working smarter, not harder,” the young man purred. “I just had to find a hooker who looked like all your worst instincts wrapped up in a bow, and you came straight to me.”

“Wow. Really? You went there?” Lucy asked, her eyebrows going up. “That’s just dickish, man.” She shook her head. “Well, why don’t you pay the lady so she can leave, and we’ll get down to whatever the fuck we’re going to be doing here.”

“Pay the lady? Paying the lady isn’t in the budget, and leaving witnesses isn’t in the game plan, I’m afraid.” He threw back his head and laughed, and Lucy wondered how long he’d spent practicing that in a mirror before he’d trotted it out in front of company. Probably a while. She crossed her arms. The woman--Lucy kicked herself for not making sure she got her name right, at least she’d have something to call her now that she needed reassurance--looked terrified.

“He said you were his ex, he said he needed some proof for divorce court, oh god, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” she stammered. Lucy shushed her.

“If it’s not in the budget, then allow me.” She slipped a roll of cash from her jacket pocket and started flipping through it. “How much did he promise you for this job? $200? $300?” They all stared at her. “$400?” The woman made a noise. “$400, then. Plus,” she added a few more bills, “another $200 to pretty please with sugar on top not call the fucking cops when you leave, because me and the king of no depth perception here have some things to settle, and it would be nice if we could do that without the police catastrophically de-escalating the situation.”

Lucy held out the cash, and the woman took it mechanically, her eyes glazing over as one of the henchmen raised his gun.

“Killing an escort isn’t going to get you on the cover of _Villains Monthly_ , bro,” Lucy observed, her lip curling into a sneer.

“Fine. I can give you one last chance to play the hero. You’re _very_ good at that, for someone who’s supposed to be on the other team,” he chuckled, a cold smile settling onto his face. “Off she goes.” 

The man with his gun trained on the woman pulled her to the door and shoved her out it without further ceremony.

“You call the cops, you’re fucking dead,” he snarled before slamming it and returning to his post.

“There. Was that so hard?” Lucy asked, her eyes flickering from one hired thug to the next. Six men, no special skills except for an unusual comfort with senseless violence, no kevlar, no extra ammo. Eyepatch made seven, and was completely unarmed with the exception of his razor-sharp intellect and unarmored but for his truly astonishing layer of overconfidence. “So that was the first order of business. I think the second order of business would be why you have the Black Widow tied to a motel chair. I mean, not to offer advice unasked-for, but I think that chair came off the assembly line having seen better days, and you’re using it to contain a super-spy. Might not be the best idea you’ve ever had.”

“Jones, Jones, Jones.” Romanoff’s head snapped around, her eyes immediately on Lucy’s face. Measuring. Studying. Committing to memory. _Eyepatch, you motherfucker_ , Lucy thought. No avoiding SHIELD now, not without a lot more effort. “You seem to be laboring under a very deep misapprehension of your situation.”

“No, I think I’m on the right page. You somehow wound up with _the_ Black Widow in your custody, and then you discovered that her only weakness is, conveniently enough, shittily-constructed cheap-ass roach-motel furniture, and now you’re going to get a promotion. Or, I guess, nobody ever thought of tying her up and then tying her to something. You’re an innovator, congratulations.”

“You know, I was going to make your death as quick and painless as I could, just out of common courtesy. I’m rather swiftly changing my mind about that.”

“Yes, yes, my death will be an example to all your enemies, and your boss--who I can only assume has _two_ eyepatches and metal teeth, so that everyone knows he’s more evil than you--will present you with a trophy for most improvement since last employee evaluation. Your future is bright.” She flashed him a brittle grin and stuck her hands in her pockets. “Your star is rising. You’re shooting straight to the top.” Her phone buzzed. “Can you excuse me for a second? I should probably take this.” She clicked a button. “Jones speaking.”

They all stared at her. Romanoff’s glare was almost weaponized. Eyepatch’s mouth was hanging open, and he didn’t notice the questioning glances his underlings were sending his way. _For my next magic trick, I'll be stunning the entire audience into inaction._

“White, yes, good to hear from you. No, I’m kind of in the middle of something right now. Okay. Okay. Look, you know how I said don’t come calling me when the secret president of Canada is kicking down your front door? I actually did mean that. That lady is _terrifying_. There’s not enough money on the planet--oh. No, that, uh, that’s a lot more money than I thought you’d be offering. That would be enough. But I’m kind of _between powers_ right now, so I probably couldn’t really earn it. Tell you what, you should give the Anti-Pope a call. Say you’ve been moved to make a substantial gift to the Church and desperately need his guidance on an action against the heretic. He and the Negasynod should be able to get the secret president to back off.” She paused and rolled her eyes irritably.

“No, I’m not fucking with you. Why would you even think I was fucking with you? I mean, come on, who are you calling me for help with? And who was right about that being a real thing? Yeah, _me_ , motherfucker. So you can just can it with your ‘are you fucking with me’ questions. Call the fucking Anti-Pope and get this shit done. Just two things, though. One, whoever’s wearing the pope-hat is the Anti-Pope. Well, they’re all clones, so that’s how you can tell. They trade off every so often. Whoever’s in the hat is the Anti-Pope, everybody else is the Negasynod. Don’t call any of the others Your Unholiness, even if they were just wearing it. Two, and I cannot stress this enough, _no infallibility jokes_. I don’t even fucking know, dude, but there is something about that particular topic that turns them completely fucking feral. I saw somebody tell one around them once, and their eyes just turned black. Then they pack-attacked him, bit his face, and tore his fucking throat out with their teeth. It was _unbelievable_. What?” She snorted. “No, I’m not trying to get you killed. They’re great, so long as you remember those two things. It shouldn’t be that hard. I mean, if you met the regular pope, you wouldn’t start snarking about catechism, would you? Of course you wouldn’t. Just take _the same basic precautions_ around the evil pope as you would with pope classic, is what I’m saying. Cool. Go get ‘em, White. Show that Canadian shadow government it can’t just have our robot presidents shot in the face at a second-rate play.”

She hung up and slid her phone back into her pocket. “Sorry about that. You know how unfinished business is, though. Always cropping back up at the least opportune moment. Now, I think you were threatening me with a protracted death?”

Eyepatch scowled at her. “I swear to god, after that, I’m going to beat you to death with a sack full of oranges.”

“Right.” Lucy nodded to herself. “On to step three, then.”

She popped a pair of pistols out of her jacket and squeezed each trigger three times. The henchmen hit the floor, dead. Both guns came to rest on Eyepatch. Romanoff jumped as much as her bonds would allow, then swallowed and stilled with visible effort.

“So, Baron von Monocle, let’s talk about how you managed to track me here.”

“HYDRA’s got your new face on file. You’re not going to get away with that stunt you pulled in New York,” he hissed, his face pale.

“The stunt I pulled in New York on their break-away no-affiliation gone-rogue splinter cell? The stunt I pulled in New York that they shouldn’t give a shit about? That stunt?”

His jaw muscles twitched.

“That stunt, then. And they sent you and the saddest goon squad I’ve seen in a while to make sure I didn’t get away with it?”

“I took the initiative. Somebody had to.”

“You took the....Well, I guess that would be why this little operation wasn’t up to even HYDRA’s typically lax standards.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, fuck _you_ , dude. I’ve been on a magical mystery tour of the vast and amateurish underbelly of crime for the past three weeks, and I can officially fucking certify you as the worst yet. You are _bad at your job_. If you weren’t so awful at everything, I might be insulted specifically at the way you assume that ‘no powers’ automatically translates into ‘harmless.’ I mean, look at you. Did you bring a gun? No. Did your boys armor up? No. Did you spend some time finding a professional killer who met your exacting ‘bad idea alert’ standards to lure me here? No. Did you involve a civilian unnecessarily? Yes. Did you involve SHIELD no matter what the outcome is? Yes. Are you going to end up dead in a ditch with no one to mourn you? Yes.”

“You talk big, but when I find you again, I’m going to--”

Lucy rolled her eyes and pulled the triggers. He flopped to the ground with a wet thud.

“You didn’t need to do that,” Romanoff said quietly.

“Villain rules, my dear Widow, villain rules. He was going to kill that woman, and he was going to kill me, and he was going to at least give killing you the old college try. Even if I were inclined to let him walk on the first two counts, which I'm not, HYDRA would just wind up killing him and dumping him in front of a SHIELD outpost over the third. This is just slightly more efficient.” She unscrewed her silencers and tossed the guns down. “I am sorry if this fucks up whatever job you’re out here doing, but if it's any consolation, it’s not really what I had planned on doing with my night, either. And I assume you can in fact get yourself loose? I’d offer to untie you, but then you’d just try to arrest and/or kill me. I’m not sure I’m good enough to beat you anymore, and I’m positive I’m not good enough to beat you without putting you in the hospital, which I’d really prefer to avoid because, you know, unnecessary stupidity. Coulson. SHIELD. You.”

Romanoff snorted. “You’re not good enough to beat me at all.”

“Well, then. I’ll just be taking my leave.”

“Wait,” the Widow said quickly. “Let me bring you in. We can cut a deal. We need to know how the ring works.”

“How the....Seriously? You want me to tell you how the ring works?” Lucy laughed. She had a fantastic mental picture of Stark screaming at an electron microscope for not revealing the arcane wonders of a gold-plated pawn shop special to him. He’d probably been running tests on that thing non-stop since he’d stolen it from her. Served him right. 

“Turn yourself in, work as an asset, and tell us how the ring works. You could have a clean record.”

“Listen to yourself,” Lucy chuckled, shaking her head. She circled the spy so that Romanoff could see her more easily. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Jones, you’ve killed what, eighty people in two weeks?”

“Eighty _murderers_ ,” Lucy corrected. It had been more than that, but she thought Romanoff probably didn’t need to hear about it.

“How long do you think you can keep this up? HYDRA’s gunning for you. Now that they know what you really look like and that you can’t defend yourself, they’re not going to stop. You’re going to die. SHIELD is not ungrateful for what you’ve done in the past, and we’re willing to overlook some of your less savory pastimes. Come in from the cold.”

“Huh.” Lucy smoothed her hair back and puffed out her cheeks. “How to put this? I appreciate the offer. I do. I know SHIELD doesn’t extend its hand that often. But, here’s how I see it. My enemies only have so many disposable assassins on the payroll. I’ve done pretty well so far, and, unpleasant as killing terrible people in terrible motel rooms is, I think I can keep this up for a while yet. And besides that, whatever delusions this asshole was operating under, not being okay with setting orphanages on fire or machine-gunning villagers or hunting nuns for sport does not translate into ‘playing hero.’ I would make an absolutely, ridiculously awful good guy. If there’s a way bringing doughnuts for the break room and providing operational outlines on enemy organizations could result in a three-alarm fire and an international incident, I’m pretty sure I could find it in under twenty-four hours. Get Coulson to show you his spreadsheet on how much me ‘helping’ has cost the free world to date sometime. It’s depressing. I cost just the US about twice as much as I pay in taxes.”

“You pay taxes?”

“Of course I pay taxes. You say that like it’s the most unbelievable thing you’ve ever heard out of my mouth.” Lucy glared at her. “ _Most importantly_ , however, I don’t _know_ how the fucking ring works. I put it on, and violà, instant power. It didn’t come with an instruction manual or an introductory DVD or a registration card with a 1-800-HELP line. If it ain’t working for you guys, I wouldn’t even know where to begin troubleshooting.”

“I see,” Romanoff said flatly.

“I’d hope so. I really do need to be going, though, because I’d like to avoid being hit with that chair when you get out of it, and I’m sure you have back-up on the way. Hopefully, this is the last you’ll be seeing of me. Take care, Romanoff.”

She bowed with a flourish before sweeping from the room and into the night.


	8. Chapter 8

Fury took a deep breath. “So, just to review--and please _do_ tell me if I miss anything--we have an alien prince, who is the sole heir to the throne of what can legitimately be called gods, unconscious and near death for unknown reasons. This was done by a sorceress called Amora, about whom we know next to nothing else, whose whereabouts are currently unknown. She has absconded with a powerful magic artifact, about which we also know nothing else, that Stark took off one Lucy Jones, ex-wizard, who is currently unavailable for interview because she is busy remorselessly slaughtering her way through half of our list of exceptionally violent offenders.” He paced around the table, everyone tracking his movement as if hypnotized by a serpent about to strike. “Not that that isn’t more than enough, but has anything _else_ gone wrong while I’ve been gone? Because, boys and girls, now is _definitely_ the time to tell me if it has.”

Natasha straightened suddenly. “We may have Jones at least.”

She tapped an image on her tablet, and it appeared on the larger screen. A short, bored-looking blonde with an AK-47 was blowing a large pink bubble with her gum in the background. In the foreground, a hooded figure in a skull mask was arguing with a man in ecclesiastical garb. “She was taking a pass on this job when I saw her in Fresno. That’s the Anti-Pope, and that’s Tony Masters. Masters is on our payroll.”

“Excellent work, Romanoff. Get a current location on her. Even if she genuinely can’t shed a single solitary ray of light on this mess with Thor, we can at least keep the mass murder to a minimum. And Coulson, Romanoff--I trust your instincts on this one. Maybe she doesn’t know a goddamn thing about that ring, but she’s spent half her life hip-deep in this bullshit. She knows more than she’s saying, and she’s as close to an expert as we can corral right now. Put together a team capable of handling her as soon as you have coordinates. I want her in hand ASAP.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Banner, Stark, Pym--where are we on Thor’s medical condition?”

Hank ran his hands through his hair. “Not good, but he’s stabilized, at least for now. We haven't seen further deterioration in over twelve hours. One of his Asgardian warriors, Fandral, has gone back to Asgard for one of their own healers. Still no progress on narrowing down a cause or a cure. The other three are standing watch in case of further attack. They’ve confirmed that there’s not much anyone on-planet can do against Amora. Fortunately, she’s hasn’t done anything further. Unfortunately, none of them are magic-users themselves, so there’s not much they can tell us about what she did or how she did it, and we're out of luck if she does start hitting. We’re still trying to run down a handful of our contacts who might be better-versed in this sort of thing, but nothing’s turned up so far.”

“Not the answer I was looking for, gentlemen. Keep working. Dismissed.” He stalked from the room, and Hill fell into step beside him.

“I still can’t believe that’s what Jones really looks like,” Tony said, tilting his head to look at the still. “She’s so...roly-poly. Like a puppy. Maybe she just needs a hug.”

“Stark?” Natasha called, tapping the table sharply. He turned to look at her. “She’s racked up a triple-digit body count, 6% of which occurred right in front of me. She didn’t bat an eye before dropping any of them. She’s fast, she’s a crack shot, and she’s got a few screws loose. Try to keep that in mind. She’s the exact same person we’ve been butting heads with all along, except the kid gloves are off and she’s traded in the fireworks for bullets. No attempting to hug her.”

“Everyone knows villain-fights don’t count,” he protested. “Back me up on this, Steve.”

Steve blinked at him. “Not sure I follow.”

“Well, you spent the entire war shooting bad guys, right? It doesn’t count.”

“Not quite the same thing, Tony,” Steve said tightly. Clint shook his head.

“If she was taking a pass on this job a week ago, what’s she doing in the middle of it now?” he asked, distracting Tony before he argued the point.

“Serving as a liaison, most likely,” Natasha replied, pulling up the relevant report and copying it onto everyone’s tablets. “Her previously unsuspected aptitude for starting and then winning gun-fights notwithstanding, she doesn’t fit the bill for a heavy anymore. But she’s worked with all of these people before, and she knows what they do and how they operate. My guess is that she’s switched from muscle to fixer.”

“Why is half of this is redacted?” Steve asked.

“Because Jones runs in very interesting and need-to-know circles when she’s not busy annoying us, committing extremely unambitious felonies, defying the laws of nature, and falling off of things,” Coulson answered. He added a note to review his files.

“Did you know about any of this, Phil?” Jan asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

“Given Jones’s habit of making up ridiculous things on the fly, trying to ‘know’ anything about her based on what she says about her activities is interesting as a thought experiment but not much else,” Natasha cut in. “Masters worked with her, and he clearly didn’t believe her about either any of the redacted material or the Anti-Pope.”

Phil shot Jan a quick smile and then turned to the rest of the table. “Banner, I need you with whatever team Natasha puts together.” The spy tensed but didn’t protest. Bruce frowned, frustrated, but followed her lead. “The only card we have to play with Asgard is that it was one of their own who did this. We need better cards, and that ring is what kick-started everything. We need Jones in here and talking. In the event that she’s lying about being depowered, which everyone please keep in mind _is_ a distinct possibility, the Hulk is the only thing we have that’s got a shot at containing her. Given her recent propensity for shooting to kill, containing her is a priority.”

Tony snorted. “You don’t actually think she could be faking this, do you? This would be a lot of effort to go through, and for what?”

“We’re talking about a woman who once turned every animal in a DC petting zoo into a giraffe for no apparent reason,” Clint reminded him. “Half of her file is her going to a lot of trouble over nothing, or for something so obscure we were never able to link it back to her. She never even claimed responsibility for that day when every penguin on the planet could fly.”

“It’s not likely that she’s faking, no,” Phil agreed. “But nobody is going in after her without a back-up plan, just in case. Let me know when you’ve got your final roster. Hank, Jan, let me know the second Fandral returns. Tony, Steve, come with me. I need to show you something. Everyone else, keep me updated on any new developments.”

“Great,” Tony grumbled. “ _Something_.”

*****

Lucy leaned back against the truck, chewing her gum and watching the numbers on the gas pump fly by. The sunlight was bright but thin, doing little to warm her. She pulled her jacket a little closer. That SHIELD was still looking for her was not unexpected. That Masters had been willing to field a request from them was not _entirely_ unexpected. That Masters had sent her on a solo supply run that would conveniently take her to a remote area adjacent to a landing strip and then thought she wouldn’t have the brains to figure something was up? That stung. She topped off the tank and paid the clerk. That should get her at least another 150 miles between her and the airstrip in question, she thought. She hated leaving the job just as it was getting interesting--the secret president was willing to risk uncommunication and the double-reverse undoing of all fealty accorded her as vassal of the state in order to get her hands on that ledger--but it wasn’t like she was going to get to stick around no matter what happened.

She fumbled with the keys, then gasped and stumbled back in shock as the Hulk dropped out of the sky in front of her. He was even bigger than she remembered. 

“Oh, come the fuck on!” she yelped. “We are 200 miles from any and everything. What the hell are you _doing_ here?”

“Thor hurt,” he rumbled.

_Oh, good fuck._

“Wasn’t me!”

He shook his massive head and moved toward her. She jumped back, trying to keep him from closing the distance. Not that it would help much. He was damned fast when he wanted to be. How had they gotten it into their skulls that she was worth sending the Hulk out over?

“Need magician.”

“Fuck off to a party planner, then,” Lucy snarled. She waved her hands at him and pointed at the lack of ring.

“Help,” he insisted.

“Okay. I strongly advise you to turn around, go find Dr. Strange, and see if he’s gotten his license to practice back yet.”

His eyes narrowed dangerously, and he huffed at her. She weighed her options quickly. She could blow her cover, teleport somewhere else, keep getting found because good luck ever getting SHIELD off her back if they thought she could avert catastrophe with a friendly extraplanetary dignitary, eventually wind up in a fight with the fucking _Hulk_ anyway, and probably lose unless she could figure out a way to teleport him to Mars, because she was pretty sure there wasn’t really a way to hurt him. Not exactly a great fucking choice. Or she could keep her cover, play for time, see what they wanted, turn it to her advantage, get her fucking ring back, and go back to normal. Well, kick the shit out of everyone who’d tried to pounce on her while she was supposedly depowered, then go back to normal. Also, admittedly, not a spectacular option. Way too many things could go wrong during all that. But a better one, certainly. Pretty much anything that didn’t involve having to fight an atomic elemental counted as better. Pitching in with the prince if she could might not be a bad idea, either. Alien invasions over royal assassination attempts tended to be an ‘everybody’s problem’ sort of problem. It wasn't like she had another planet to pop off to it this one got fucked up. She forced herself to relax.

“You know what? Okay. Fine. _I give_.” She put her hands up. He lunged at her, his fingers closing on empty air as she scrambled into and then back out the other side of the truck bed with surprising speed. She hit the ground, rolled, and came up with a gun leveled at him. Not that it would do much more than upset him, but it was reflex at this point. He watched her, puzzlement verging into anger. “What the fuck was that?” she gritted. “I said I’ll go with you. You win.”

“Carry.”

“Yeah, no. You’re not carrying me. Call your bros to come pick us up.”

He glowered at her. “ _Hulk carry._ ”

“Nope. Who’s running this show? I’ll call them myself and have them pick us up.“ She holstered her pistol and pulled out her phone. “Happy? I’ll dial SHIELD for a ride. This is conceivably the most embarrassing thing I’ve done since losing my ring to Iron Man, of all possible fucking people. My pride has been mortally wounded. You can't see it right now, but rest assured, it's flopping around on the floor telling me to let its mother know it loves her. Let's not let its death be in vain, huh? Who do I call? Coulson? Widow? Hawkeye? Hill? Jennie the Intern?”

The Hulk shook his head and roared in frustration. Lucy took a cautious step back, keeping a sharp eye on him. He casually slapped the truck between them across the parking lot.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! That is not changing my mind about anything, dude. That is, if anything, putting me even farther off the idea of you picking me up.”

“Help Thor!”

“I can’t help anybody except the smaller variety of scavenger if I’m a wet smear on the pavement,” she said firmly. If it came down to an actual fight, there was no way her cover wasn’t getting blown. Normal people didn’t survive getting hit by the Hulk. Normal people also couldn’t vanish into thin air to avoid getting hit by the Hulk. “Now. Who do I call for a ride?”

He moved too fast for her to track, closing the distance between them and scooping her up in his arms as if she were a child. Her phone went flying, and she scrabbled for purchase against muscles like steel cables. “Shit!”

"Hold on," he grunted, crouching. 

“Shit, shit, shit,” she hissed. He was going to jump. He was really going to jump. She snaked her arms around his neck as tightly as she could. He sprang skyward. Her nails dug into his skin, and every muscle in her body tensed. Lucy stared past them at the retreating ground, her stomach rebelling in a way it didn’t when she was doing far more reckless things under her own power. She concentrated on breathing, on pretending that she was just falling out of a plane again, on anything that might keep her from throwing up on the Hulk. _I will not become a walking punchline, I will not become a walking punchline, I will not become a walking punchline..._

The descent was more manageable. Falling, she knew. She could save herself from a fall. She was used to saving herself from a fall. The hard part was resisting the urge to do so as they grew closer and closer to the ground. Eventually she gave up, buried her face in his chest, and imagined the quiet depths of the ocean. _I am the ceaseless and unending. I am the cycle of life and death and rebirth. I am the acceleration and suspension of time. I am under the frozen continents and above the gaping fires of their birth. I am rethinking my dedication to this ruse. I am going to find somebody with a time machine. I am going to go back in time and become a certified public accountant instead of a supervillain. I am going to go back in time and sabotage Banner’s academic career. Good luck turning yourself into the Hulk with an AA in dental hygiene from community college, you dick._

The impact of the landing was not as bone-jarring as she’d expected, given the impact crater. They were soaring upwards again before she had time to dread it. They were at the apex of the third jump when she heard the beat of wings and saw a condor-sized hummingbird made of the night sky gliding along beside them. Its heart was a quasar, and the one eye she could see was a coalescing disc of swirling gas and dust. Its slender, curved beak opened after a moment, about to speak. Lucy shook her head sharply. _Not now, don’t fucking have time for this, save the euphoric revelations of cosmic wisdom for some other day, can’t you see I’m fucking_ busy _here?_ The hallucination blurred and broke apart, its words unsaid. Her skin tingled with the cold of the rushing wind and the discharge of the vision’s power.

They landed within spitting distance of a tiny airstrip, barely missing the lone, rusting hangar, and she slid from his arms and leaned against his chest for support for a moment. The bird tugged at her mind. _War. Death. The sun._ It had been shrouded in darkness, though. What did it mean when it was submerged in the night? War, death, and the moon? Peace, love, and understanding? John Lennon coming back to life? She was fucking terrible at portents. It could mean that her library books were overdue and she’d left the stove on, for all she could remember. It was a common problem with revelations of deep wisdom experienced while, for instance, tripping balls and lost in a corn maze. They were easier to find but a mite harder to retain.

“Okay?” the Hulk breathed, brows furrowed. Whatever the fuck it meant, she had more immediate concerns.

She balled up her fist and hit him as hard as she could without resorting to magic. “ _You goddamned asshole!_ So help me, if you ever do anything like that again, I will find some new form of gamma radiation that undoes whatever it is you’ve got going on, use it on you, and then set you on fucking fire! Do you understand me?”

“Okay,” he grunted, patting her on the back. It was all she could do to keep her feet.

“That wasn’t an ‘okay, I understand you and won’t do that again’-okay, was it?” She scowled at him. “That was ‘you’re okay, you haven’t broken any bones’. And you know what--”

“Jones.”

“--I've got to say to that? Fuck you. I’m serious about that whole gamma--”

“Jones.”

“--thing. You pick me up again, I will find a way to murder you. You need me to figure out how to say ‘No picking me up!’ in Spanish? Because--"

“Jones.” 

”--I will. It’s weird and unnerving, and I don’t particularly need a walking, talking monument to mankind’s science-based folly that far up in my personal space.”

“ _Jones._ ” 

“ _What?_ ” Lucy snarled, turning. “Oh.” She tried and failed to remember some of the Russian obscenities one of Masters’s mercenaries had cut loose with every time the Negasynod had done anything weird. “Nice to see you again, Black Widow.”

“I’m going to need you to turn around slowly, keep your hands in the air, and not make any sudden moves.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill.” Lucy sighed and did as Romanoff had asked. The spy was flanked by two dozen fully-armored agents. Lucy had a tiny red dot hovering on her chest for every last one of them, too. If she’d really been magicless, she thought, she’d be deeply regretting that little lecture back in Fresno right about now. “You going to send a meat-shield over here to disarm me, or should I start throwing down my hardware?”

Romanoff’s eyes flickered ever so slightly. Lucy managed a big, fake grin. “Can I formally request the pretty lady on the right, then?”

“You can start by losing the gun in the small of your back, Jones. _Slowly_.”

Lucy smiled thinly. After several minutes, there was an impressive pile of weapons on the tarmac in front of her, and her coat and cargo pants were significantly less bulky. Several of the agents were beginning to look nervous. One of them swallowed an undignified noise when a grenade with large googly eyes glued to it joined the cache. 

“Happy?” she asked finally.

“I’ll be happier when you add the brass knuckles in your left front pants pocket to that stack,” Romanoff answered. Lucy hesitated, then fished them out and held them up.

“This, I want back. Sentimental value. Mind holding onto it?”

“You’re not in a position to make demands,” she pointed out.

“One, I’m not making a demand. This is a request. If you like, I’ll even say please. Two, if you have an extradimensional god-king down for the count on your watch and need my help with him, I’d say that yeah, I kind of am in a position to make a few demands. I’m just not. Yet.” Her smile got a little bigger and brighter. “So, _please_ , would you mind holding onto this for me, if you’re going to insist on me not carrying it myself?”

Romanoff’s expression turned poisonous, and she shot a glare at the Hulk. “Fine. Toss it over.”

Lucy put it at her feet with a soft underhand throw. She knelt and retrieved it, her eyes never leaving Lucy and her right hand never straying from her gun. She tucked it into a pouch on her belt and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. Lucy arched an eyebrow.

“You know I was a street magician even before I was a real magician, right?” she asked. Romanoff glowered at her. “I was really, really good. I mean, _really_ good. I got arrested constantly, and I only ever made it to booking once. And I’m not saying that to be all ‘You’ll never get me back to base, I’m blowing this popsicle stand.’ I’m just pointing out that those are stupid and useless. I’m not going to try something with the lean green smashing machine standing right here, on account of having no interest whatsoever in being hit so hard that my bones fall out. It also turns out that I’ve got a terrible allergy to bullets.”

“You’re wearing a vest,” Romanoff reminded her.

“A vest that will stop, at best, the first couple to hit me. So, do we really have to do the whole handcuff thing? I’ll probably wind up just making it weird halfway through the flight, even though you’re really not my type.”

“Red-haired, armed, and willing to kill you?”

Lucy made a face. “I’d give my left tit for _any_ of that to reliably put people out of the running.”

Romanoff gave her a measuring look. “You try anything, you make one wrong move, you look at someone funny, and I will personally put a round in the back of your skull.”

“Fair enough.”

“Glad we understand each other. Everybody on the transport.” She put the handcuffs away and gestured to the hangar. Lucy started when the Hulk’s hands settled on her waist.

“What did I say about picking me up?” she hissed.

“Jones!” Romanoff snapped.

Lucy scowled. “Fine. But I’m not going to fucking forget this, Banner.”

The Hulk grinned and lifted her, tucking her into the crook of his arm.


	9. Chapter 9

Lucy flipped through the file again, her lips twisting. Romanoff was watching her closely, waiting for her to...she wasn’t sure. Neither was Romanoff. It looked like an even split between ‘answer the fucking question’ and ‘try to kill everybody,’ and the odd thing was that she’d be happier with the latter. The latter event, they had a playbook for. The transport plane’s engines hummed steadily. The other agents had not relaxed their alert in the slightest. Banner was still in his Hulk form, on top of which he was being remarkably calm for the monster. Romanoff was....Ah, that was it. She was waiting for something to go wrong. Lucy sighed. Not that she particularly blamed her. Of course, she didn’t feel particularly sorry for her, either. Her capacity for empathy had been rather hampered by the spy swiping her bulletproof vest, taking away her boots just because they’d set off the metal detector, making a face like it was killing her not to say something about the pink polish on her toenails, and telling the Hulk keep ahold of her. The Hulk shifted underneath her, and she elbowed him to no appreciable effect. She’d never have guessed the gamma monster was so fidgety.

“Well?” Romanoff prompted. Well, she’d been over the material they had given her twice now. Well, she wasn’t any closer to an answer. 

“ _Well_ , it would be easier if you’d let me watch the surveillance footage from the attack,” Lucy grumbled. “This,” she tapped the sheaf of papers, “doesn’t tell me a whole fucking lot. Except that I’m still not a doctor and still don’t know what ‘subdural hematoma’ means or why it’s a good thing that there’s no sign of one.”

“I’m not giving you a tablet.”

“Fine. We’ll wait until we get there, then.” Lucy crossed her arms stubbornly. The effect was ruined by the massive green forearm across her waist, and she gave up after a moment. The sheer bulk of the Hulk made her look like a toddler in comparison, and she was sure her bare feet were not helping the impression. “I can at least say that everything you’ve seen fit to show me so far doesn’t _exclude_ the possibility that I can help.”

She wasn’t going to know for sure until she actually fucking saw him, though. Lucy pushed her hair out of her face irritably. They were venturing a bit far afield of her experience. Alien magic and its effect on alien physiology was not something she’d had to worry about often. Hell, _earth magic_ and its effect on alien physiology was not something she’d had to worry about often. In point of fact, she’d only really had to worry about it once, and that had been something of a nothing ventured, nothing gained situation. That didn’t appear to be the case here. Help was on the way, and might conceivably arrive in time. 

And that was assuming it _was_ alien magic, and not perfectly normal but undetectable by earth science injuries sustained during a fight between _alien gods_. Information on Asgardian biology was thin on the ground, which meant that it could hardly be taken for granted. The assumption that the problem was magical in nature was based purely on SHIELD’s doctors not being able to work up a diagnosis and the attacker having been one Amora the Enchantress. Lucy considered asking Romanoff if they’d verified that that wasn’t just a family or clan name. After all, it wasn’t like Stark’s suit was actually made of iron, and black widow spiders weren’t particularly well known for tasing people. If Amora was just from Enchantersville or some fucking thing, how the hell would they know? It didn’t sound like Asgard had exactly volunteered maps and demographic information. She noted the look on Romanoff’s face and thought better of making the inquiry.

Back to the beginning, then. Organize the information logically. He’d been out cold for seventy-three hours. Once they’d stabilized him, they’d seen no improvement and no further deterioration. As far as mortal medicine could determine, the injuries sustained during the assault had been superficial. They were, however, not healing. A note in Banner’s handwriting said that far more serious wounds had normally healed on their own within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. This had been observed by both his Asgardian companions and other Avengers. Lucy thought of the smashed arm he’d been sporting in New York. Good to know, but it did indicate that this was definitely not normal. Asgardian healers had been sent for but had yet to arrive. Interplanetary travel on demand was apparently not a science they’d perfected. 

The surveillance system had recorded the entire fight. All observed injuries were consistent with blows landed during the scuffle. No energy or temperature fluctuations had registered. Magic was not an _unreasonable_ conclusion to draw. Lucy frowned and thought of her own battles. The massacres of the past month notwithstanding, she’d always used magic. Using magic to hurl a brick at someone’s face did not imbue the brick with special properties. The result was precisely the same as hurling a brick at someone’s face using perfectly mundane means. Causing magical injuries...that took some extra effort. It was closer to a healing or a transformation or a curse. And it was generally _wasted_ effort, unless the point was to be a colossal dick about it. She had yet to encounter a situation in which it was worth hexing somebody with an unhealing wound when the same amount of power and concentration, conventionally applied, would land them in the ICU without further ado. Why would Amora go to the trouble of putting him in a permanent coma when it would have been just as easy to incinerate him? It didn’t make sense.

Or rather, she amended, it didn’t make sense according to earth rules. Maybe there was some bizarre Asgardian honor code where permanent comas could be construed as not counting the same way blasting someone to ash would. The data from the surveillance recordings--which was surprisingly thorough, Stark’s technology seemingly much more reliable than its creator--showed no sign of an argument or any warning that the interaction would end in blows. Amora had gotten the drop on him completely and utterly.

Lucy closed the folder and tossed it back to Romanoff. So far she had a lot of questions and precisely zero answers.

“Help Thor,” the Hulk rumbled. The vibration of his chest against her back made her lungs itch. It was like nothing so much as listening to an alligator bellow.

“If I can,” she muttered, frowning. It was possible she wouldn’t be able to. If she couldn’t, and whatever the Asgardians had for EMTs couldn’t, maybe Mimir would finally get out of that tree after all. She stiffened. _Goddammit_. “Hey, Romanoff?”

The Black Widow looked up and tilted her head.

“What happened to that apple I gave them, back when HYDRA was tearing up the city?”

“Nothing. It’s been sitting in a safe since then, because nobody is stupid enough to try to use a gift from you. Why?”

“No reason.”

Romanoff fixed her with a sharp look, but she didn’t push the issue. Lucy relaxed again. Just two more hours before they touched down. She’d be within striking distance of her ring. She’d get a good look at SHIELD headquarters. Maybe she’d even take a serious whack at fixing Thor, out of the goodness of her heart, and...who the fuck was she kidding? She knew how this was going to go. Badly. Very, very badly.

She was going to get her ring back, and get a good look at SHIELD headquarters, and then something was going to go wrong. Horribly wrong. When did it ever not? The way her luck was running, it was going to shake out like the time she’d turned Namor’s bikini briefs into proper pants. She’d probably spend the next six months getting into slapfights with penguins again. If fortune smiled, maybe-- _maybe_ \--she’d at least wind up hitting someone she didn’t feel bad about hitting. Alien sorceresses, for instance. The photo in the file showed a woman who was pretty, yes, but hardly to the point that Lucy would feel worse about fighting her than she had about punting a horde of honor-avenging Gentoo penguins off a beach and into predator-infested waters. After all, she’d ambushed somebody who was supposedly an ally and stuck him in a coma, which was a little underhanded, whereas Gentoos were little and adorable and easily bribed, which more than made up for the surprising amount of internecine backstabbing they did. 

Lucy drummed her fingers on the Hulk’s arm. It was hardly inconceivable that if she decided to reverse the spell, she was going to have to get into it with the original spellcaster. She should probably figure out a contingency plan that didn’t involve pretending get knocked out and then quietly crawling out a back door once nobody was paying attention. She was pretty sure Coulson was on to that one, anyway, and it was only marginally more effective than hitting opponents with chairs and accusing them of liking Nickelback.

*****

“Tasha’s got Jones,” Clint announced to the nearly-empty conference room at large. Phil nodded without tearing his eyes away from a status report by a team looking for Amora, and Hank paused on his way out the door. “ETA 2100.” He clicked the attachment she’d sent along with the news. “And...we might want to villain-proof the sickbay.”

“Why, what...” Hank stopped, glancing at the screen over Clint’s shoulder. His eyes widened. “That’s a grenade, isn’t it?”

“No, that’s a grenade with googly eyes glued to it,” Clint said appreciatively. His focus softened for a moment.

“No,” Phil said, looking up from his computer.

“No, what?”

“No, you cannot stick googly eyes on any of your arrows.”

“How did you--”

“I know that look.”

Clint sighed, then brightened again.

“No sticking googly eyes on anyone else’s equipment either,” Phil warned.

“But--”

“We’re trying to cultivate a certain amount of professionalism here, Hawk,” Phil pointed out gently. “And Tony might make good on one of his threats to put you through a wall if he walked into his lab and found giant cartoon eyes stuck to the helmet of the Mark VIII. I can’t afford to have you in the hospital for week right now.”

“Is letting someone who sticks googly eyes on grenades anywhere near Thor when he’s vulnerable really the best idea?” Hank looked askance at Phil. “This woman seems to be legitimately insane.”

“Does this look like the face of a legitimately insane person to you?” Clint asked, holding up a full-screen display of the Hulk holding a sullen woman in his lap. “She’s not even wearing any shoes. And see? She’s only flipping off the camera with one hand.”

“Why is she not in restraints?” Hank asked plaintively.

“Probably because the Hulk is more effective.”

Phil sighed. “Hank, I understand your concerns. I share most of them, in fact. But unless you and Tony have made any headway with Thor’s condition, the Asgardian healers have arrived, or Amora has been captured, we don’t have a lot of options right now. If it turns out she can’t do anything, we funnel her into the court system.”

“You know, until her inevitable escape,” Clint added.

“You’re not helping, Barton,” Hank grumbled.

“Why don’t you two go do a sweep of any areas she’ll need access to and make sure everything she could use to start trouble is either secured or removed?” Phil suggested firmly. He opened a comm line to Natasha as they trooped out, Hank still looking less than convinced.

“Romanoff.” Natasha’s tone was clipped and slightly strained a way that usually indicated a little too much time trying to wrangle Tony.

“This is Agent Coulson. Would it be feasible for me to speak with Jones?”

He heard a distinct “Hi, Coulson!” yelled from the background, followed by a heavy sigh from Natasha.

“How much grief has she been giving you?” he asked sympathetically.

“Practically none, thanks to the Hulk, but she’s annoying and unpredictable and won’t give me a straight answer on whether or not she can help us. Basically about what we expected, only on a more advanced timetable thanks to the Hulk prematurely divulging information.”

“Can you put me on with her?”

There was a long pause. “Hi, Coulson. If you missed me this much, you could have just called.”

“Jones. You’ve been busy.”

“Well, you know. I try to keep myself occupied. Idle hands and all.”

“Fury’s not exactly happy about how you’ve been keeping yourself occupied.”

“Yeah, I can understand that. I mean, opposition infighting with minimal civilian involvement and no collateral damage must be hell on you guys. I bet there’s been a rash of people making it home on time and everything. Oh, god. Don’t tell me--somebody actually got to take a previously-scheduled vacation, didn’t they? Coulson, I’m so sorry. I never meant for it to go that far.”

“Jones.”

“Yeah?”

“Can you please be serious for once in your life?”

“That’s kind of a tall order given the inherent ludicrousness of my current situation. I’m using a radiation-powered bioweapon of mass destruction as a booster seat. But I can give it a shot.”

“Do you think there’s anything you can do for Thor? Because we’re looking at the possibility of armageddon if you make this worse, and I can practically guarantee that Fury isn’t going to let you survive it.”

“Yeah, yeah. I fuck this up, I get shot twenty-odd times and thrown out the back of a plane somewhere over the Pacific. I get it. Like I told Romanoff, I’m not going to know until I see him. Maybe I can do something, maybe I can’t do anything, maybe it’s not even fucking magic. This is not, as they say, standard curriculum. But here’s the thing, Phil. Can I call you Phil? Never mind. Calling you Phil would be weird, even if you were down with it. Anyway, as I was saying, the thing is, _I’m going to need my fucking ring back_.”

Phil closed his eyes for a moment and massaged his temples. “I’m afraid that’s not on the table, Jones.”

“So put it on the table.” There was a hard edge to her voice that he hadn’t heard in a while. That hard edge usually preceded something unpleasant.

“The ring is no longer in our possession.”

“You seriously expect me to believe that SHIELD relinquished control of something it stole fair and square to an outside agency? Also, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you guys are kind of an army. I’m pretty sure you could get it back if you got really interested in getting it back. Which maybe you should consider becoming, if you expect me to be able to do jack shit for you.”

“It’s currently in the hands of Thor’s assailant.”

“What the fuck.” Phil could practically hear her train of thought derailing.

“He was injured during the course of the theft.”

“Amora stole my ring.”

“That’s correct.”

“ _Why_?”

Phil’s eyes narrowed. Now _that_ was an interesting question. “I don’t know, Jones. Why _wouldn’t_ she want a powerful magical artifact?”

She sputtered for a few moments.

“Is this where you call me a mundane peasant again?” he asked pleasantly.

“No.” He could hear her take a deep breath on the other end of the line. “I suppose I kind of had this coming for not asking this right off the bat, but this Amora lady, she _is_ actually a sorceress, right? That’s not just something people call her because she was really good at track and field or stabbing people or card tricks or flashing her tits at sporting events or whatever the fuck they do for kicks in Asgard? She already does magic?”

“Yes, she’s a magic-user.”

“Okay, then, what the fuck does she need _more magic_ for?”

“I’m not sure I understand the question.”

“I retract my previous statement about not calling you a mundane peasant again, you mundane peasant,” she growled. “Magic isn’t like munitions, or money, or--Banner, stop squeezing me, so help me _I will find a way to hurt you_ \--anything like that. It’s more like having a spring or a well. So, if somebody who has a spring or a well or a goddamned lake _right there_ hijacks a truck full of bottled water, a sensible question to ask is what the fuck they need all that bottled water for, when they’ve got a fucking spring. So, what the fuck does she need my ring for if she’s already got enough power to lay your boy out flat?”

“Maybe if you behave yourself, you’ll get a chance to ask her once we’ve apprehended her,” Phil offered, thinking. “Put the Black Widow back on the line.”

“She never left, I’m on speaker-ph--”

“I’m here, Coulson.”

“We’re in a holding pattern until you get here or someone picks Amora back up. How’s Banner doing?”

“Like a kid with a teddy bear. It’s somewhat alarming.”

“We’re sitting right here. We can hear you,” Jones complained in the background.

“Better than the alternative,” Phil pointed out. “Just to warn you, Clint was more than a little taken with that pic you sent him.”

“I thought he might be.”

“He’s been explicitly ordered not to replicate it, but try not to stab him if he gets out of line. Stay sharp, Natasha.”

“Will do, Coulson. Romanoff out.”


	10. Chapter 10

Lucy listened absently to the pilots’ chatter as the plane banked and began its descent. Everything was on track. They wouldn’t be smashing into the landscape. Hooray, she thought sourly. At least Banner had finally turned back into his more articulate self, and she’d gotten a proper seat with a proper harness.

She was torn between sulking over the fact that she wasn’t getting her ring back any time soon and wondering how any magician could be stupid enough to swipe it in the first place. Stark was understandable. He’d just keep running tests and running tests and running tests, hoping to crack the code. The null result would just spur him into greater investigative creativity. Amora should have been able to tell there wasn’t a goddamn thing about it that was special with a single glance. Of course, if she could snooker Doom into stealing it and obsessing over the aetheric mysteries contained therein, it would at least be a hat trick. They touched down roughly, and Lucy got a closer look at the underground facility they were taxiing into. Clever camouflage. It was practically invisible from the air.

She had to admit to being a little excited in spite of herself. She’d been inside SHIELD facilities before, of course, but as a rule they’d been on fire, exploding, sinking into the earth, and/or being overrun with giant aardvarks. It occasionally hadn’t even been her fault, but, regardless of who’d been responsible, that sort of thing didn’t leave a lot of time for poking around, tinkering with sensitive equipment, or rooting through classified files. Or weaponizing the office plants. She thought for a moment. SHIELD seemed like peace lilies-and-ficuses type of organization. Peace lilies were, generally speaking, utterly worthless for anything beyond frustrating the people tasked with keeping them alive and looking nice. Ficuses, properly managed, could be taught to work door knobs, elevators, and simple firearms. Ficuses, she liked. The plane came to a stop, and the engines powered down. Lucy glanced around and found Romanoff watching her warily.

“What?”

“You’re smiling.”

“Is there a rule against smiling on a SHIELD base?” Lucy asked. “Seems like it would be a real morale killer. And I’d think you’d be _thrilled_ that I’m happy. I’m way less destructive when I’m happy.”

“That’s not actually true,” Romanoff pointed out.

“It has yet to be empirically disproven,” Lucy sniffed.

“ _Why_ are you smiling?”

“Do I need a reason? This may come as a surprise to you, but I am generally a very cheerful person. I don’t, like, spend my days sitting at home and crying into my cereal when I’m not turning pigeons back into dinosaurs.”

“You’re aware that New Orleans is _still_ infested with microraptors because of you, yes?” Banner snapped. 

She shook her head. He was always cranky and jittery after a change; if his alter ego were just a touch less terrifying, she’d almost prefer the Hulk to him. The cargo bay ramp lowered, and half the agents proceeded down it, their weapons at ready. Romanoff and Banner stuck to her like glue.

“You act like it’s a problem,” Lucy said. “Microraptors are fucking awesome, in addition to being great on a po-boy with hot sauce. If anyone has a right to be mad, it’s Miami. They’ve got basilisks--which taste fucking terrible, by the way--falling out of the trees and sunbathing on car hoods and crawling in through pet doors and nobody to blame for it but themselves. I’m sure they’d like very much to be able to rail at a supervillain every time one of those stupid lizards gets stuck in a pool filter or a recycling bin instead of at their own lax regulations regarding the importation of exotic reptiles.”

“You afflicted a city with dinosaurs,” he retorted, herding her down the ramp. The remaining agents brought up the rear.

“See, you say I afflicted a city with dinosaurs. I say I rid a city of pigeons. That’s your problem, Banner--you have no ability to spin things. Why call it breaking Harlem when you can call it unscheduled, pro bono urban restructuring?” she asked brightly. “Well, I guess not, strictly speaking, pro bono. Ross’s little unauthorized medical experiment with that Soviet agent on loan from the UK probably drained a slush fund or two.” Banner made a slightly strangled noise, and Romanoff gestured sharply. The agents covering them fell back several paces. Lucy didn’t miss a beat. “Besides which, I refuse to be more upset about it than New Orleans is. Anything their chamber of commerce promotes heavily to tourists shouldn’t be something I can get in trouble over.”

“You never, ever shut up, do you?” Banner asked after a moment.

“Nope.” She flashed him a quick grin. “Makes playing possum a whole lot easier. Nobody thinks to check for a pulse. They just assume if I’m not talking, I must be dead. HYDRA agents do kind of the same thing, only with little Alka-Seltzer tabs. Once enough of them did the ‘Die for HYDRA!’ thing with the cyanide caps, people started swapping their suicide pills out for antacids and just faking it. You wait for the Dudley Do-Right of the moment to get distracted after a few minutes, then sneak off and catch a cab out of town. So, are we taking this huge freight elevator down, or are they going to wheel Thor out here? I’m not exactly a fan of underground doom-bunkers, but trying to work up a magic diagnosis or any kind of countermeasure is best done someplace you’re not liable to get run over by a C-23.”

“Status, Banner?” Romanoff asked quietly.

“I’m fine, Widow.” He sounded almost resigned. “Let’s get this over with.”

Another gesture from Romanoff, and everyone fell back in and trooped into the elevator. Lucy started humming “The Girl from Ipanema” as the doors slid shut.

“Stop that,” Romanoff ordered. “Elevator: Sublevel 20.”

“Voice authorization confirmed,” the computer stated. The platform began its descent.

“Voice activated, huh?” Lucy said. “Clever. Gotta be hell whenever HYDRA busts out the sulfur hexafluoride, though.”

Banner took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. He caught Romanoff’s look and shrugged. “It’s a gas. The effect is, uh, not dissimilar to helium, only it’s heavier than air, not lighter.”

The spy’s lips quirked down ever so slightly, the look of consternation vanishing as soon as it had appeared.

“You know what the most unexpected thing to come out of the microraptor incident was?” Lucy asked, turning to Banner. “The disinformation campaign Key West ran on Hawai’i afterwards. That was some coordinated shit. I mean, think about it. You spend three months augmenting New Orleans’s campaign with a false-flag operation, promote them as the only city in the continental US to have genuine, bona fide, real, live dinosaurs, and then you start throwing up posters and commercials telling people to visit Hawai’i and check out their burgeoning megalodon population. Seriously brilliant work. And what’s Hawai’i going to do about it? I mean, everybody’s pretty sure the last megalodon died in 1844, but you know how proving a negative is. Good luck conclusively demonstrating there _aren’t_ sharks the size of 767s swarming your coasts. It’s almost like some of SHIELD’s guys escaped the Hatchery and Conditioning Center and went into marketing.”

A shimmer ran through Romanoff’s consciousness, a flash of silver, like fish scales in murky water catching a stray sunbeam. It was gone in a heartbeat, almost too fast to catch: the impulse to wheel on her and demand, in the most terrifying way possible, what the fuck she knew about the Hatchery and Conditioning Center. If it hadn’t been for Banner standing there, she might have given in to it. Lucy suppressed a smile, delighted. Who knew? Coulson’s favorite cold-blooded killer had a sense of humor after all. The elevator stopped. Almost there, then. 

The doors opened to reveal a long, antiseptic corridor. Most of the agents peeled off and took positions along the hallway. Banner shifted uncomfortably, and it was hard not to notice the way Romanoff tensed and coiled at every hint of distress from him. Lucy wondered idly if she even knew there was more to her reaction than fear. Probably not. Fear was so much easier to pick out than concern or affection, after all. There wasn’t much need to wonder what Banner was reacting to. She’d seen his section of the Avengers’ tower once on a sneak-and-peek mission. It was nothing but wide open space and glass, the architecture studiously avoiding anything that might give the impression of penning him in or caging him. If he’d ever preferred a cozy environment to an easily-escaped one, years on the run from Ross had burned it out of him.

She curled her hand into a loose fist and play-punched him in the arm. “Don’t worry, Banner. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Romanoff stiffened, and Lucy shot him her best cocky smile. He had jumped at the contact, but he relaxed slightly at the smile. Not reassured, not happy, but distracted. Nothing quite like a solid reminder that the agents weren’t there for _him_ , she thought. And any mental space occupied with trying to figure out if she was for real was mental space not occupied with freaking the fuck out, which was a small victory. Romanoff led the way past room after room of empty beds and unused medical equipment, and Lucy trailed along after her, wistfully noting the complete lack of anything remotely resembling a ficus. 

The hall emptied into a larger waiting area. Coulson was stationed at the rear door, nominally at ease but ready for trouble. She frowned slightly at the small contingent and reached out with her mind. The Wasp and Captain America were on the other side of the elevator shaft, in a corridor mirroring their own location. Close enough for a fast response, but out of the way in the meantime. It was hard to get a bead on the extent of the facility. Most of it was unoccupied, but it seemed enormous, far larger than she’d initially thought. Ant-Man wasn’t present at all, nor was Stark. Hawkeye was...in the air ducts above them, observing. Clever man, she thought. Clever, clever man. She felt a momentary surge of satisfaction at having fixed his arm.

Coulson moved forward to meet them as they entered the room, his lips smiling but his body language on guard. Lucy did her best not to respond to it. The dark-haired Asgardian woman she’d seen before stopped in mid-pace to stare at her, hand going immediately to the hilt of her sword. The Robin Hood-looking bastard from the rooftop was nowhere in evidence. A third alien with a dour expression was examining her silently. Thor...was wide-eyed and halfway through a turkey leg. Lucy tilted her head. What the fucking hell were they playing at?

“He looks fine to me, Coulson,” she said jauntily. “A miraculous recovery. Mazel tov. I’ll send you a bill for the consultation. It’s been wonderful seeing you again, we really should do this more often.”

“Jones, that’s not Thor,” Coulson said firmly.

“Come again?”

“That’s not Thor. This is Sif, Hogun, and _Volstagg_.”

“Agent, who is this?” Sif asked quietly, her hand not straying from her weapon. Lucy turned to him and raised her eyebrows. He sighed.

“Sif, this is Lucy Jones. You’ve met before, though she looked a bit different at the time.”

“I was wearing much nicer clothes,” Lucy supplied helpfully. “I’d still _be_ wearing much nicer clothes, but sometimes people with no style whatsoever get to pick the uniform.” She turned to Coulson. “So Thor is...where, exactly? I have a hard time believing you can fit two dudes this size in one facility.”

“This is not what we agreed upon, Agent,” Sif said, her voice dropping and her muscles tensing slightly, ever so slightly. 

Lucy considered them, her eyes resting carefully on Coulson. Warriors. An honor guard? Bodyguards, maybe? Yes. But something else, too. Close friends. Thor’s friends as well as his guard. Attacked by one of their own, helpless while their prince was dying, stranded on a foreign world, reinforcements coming late if ever....It would only take one little push, wouldn’t it? The tiniest bit of pressure on just the right brittle spot, a few poorly chosen words. Swords out, guns drawn, Banner going right over the edge. Chaos, blood, death, and no way out. No escape. Romanoff could feel it, too; she was wound tight as a bowstring, ready for a threat she could sense but not see. _I probably should have made time for the hummingbird to talk_ , Lucy thought. 

Coulson opened his mouth to speak, and there it was, the flashpoint, like a storm cloud finally resolving itself into a tornado. Lucy sighed. _Nope. Not today, motherfuckers._

“I know this whole thing must be incredibly upsetting for you all,” she cut in, talking over whatever it was he’d been about to say. “And you have my sympathy. You really do. But I’m probably not going to be able to help, and I feel like it’s best for everyone if we get that out in the open right away. Please don’t get your hopes up. SHIELD is trying everything in their power, and that includes a few things with long odds. So, with your permission, I’d like to take a look at him. It shouldn’t take long, and then I’ll be out of the way.” Coulson stared at her. “What do you say?”

Sif appraised her with a prejudice she found almost insulting. Then again, they had just gotten devastatingly fucked over by a magician they thought they could trust, and she was an unknown. She kept an inoffensively serious look plastered on her face until the one who apparently wasn’t Thor, but still looked more dangerous than anything that wasn’t a charging rhino had any right to be, shifted his weight and cleared his throat.

“If my comrades and I might have some time to confer?” he asked. Lucy put a little more effort into keeping her expression still. He sounded almost timid. Well, she’d misread the shit out of that one.

“Of course,” Coulson said smoothly, nodding. They withdrew through the rear door. 

It had barely latched when Coulson hissed, “Lucille Elizabeth Jones!”

Lucille? _Elizabeth?_

“A, Coulson, that is not my name. Though I was in fact named after Lucille Ball, my grandfather insisted that it be just Lucy. And I either don’t have a middle name, or it’s some _really_ god-awful hippie bullshit like Rainbow or Woodchuck that you’d never admit to your child once you sobered up enough to realize what you’d done. B, are you trying to dad me? Because that is bad strategy here. I mean, just terrible, terrible strategy. Going into dad-mode at someone after you put a fire-team on them is just not done. Or if it is, there is a statute of limitations. You can’t dad them until at least a certain period of time has passed since you issued a ‘preferably alive, but we’re not married to it’ order. Like, a week, at least.

“C, you cannot pull the same bureaucratic, diplomatic nonsense on them that you do on HYDRA and AIM and every other earth-based idiot with an acronym. _We_ all speak that lingo. _They_ grew up knowing that they were going to stab people for a living and get high-fived for it by society at large. Where they’re from, I’m reasonably sure it’s still considered good form to punch people in the face for looking at you wrong during a formal state dinner, while you’re still at that dinner. Maybe you don’t want to get too elaborate with reasons for surprising them at least until the guy with the Van Dyke gets back with a space-medic?” Lucy deflated a little. “Or, you know, go for it. _I_ don’t particularly want to take a sword to the gut,” _again, because it’s distinctly unpleasant_ , “but obviously I’m not the only one here. If it’s some lifelong dream of yours to try it out, who am I to judge?”

“I see,” Coulson said after a moment.

“I’m just saying,” she muttered, putting her hands up. “Dr. Strange can be a bit of a dick, and I’m guessing you’ve already got guys out looking for him. He escalates things, and they’re on edge. They look human, but when the chips are down, they’re not from around here. Watch yourself with them.”

“That sounds almost like good advice,” Banner offered softly. There was green bleeding back out of his eyes, and she congratulated herself on a bullet well-dodged.

“Yeah, well, do me a favor and don’t tell anyone you got it from me,” she retorted. “I’ve got a reputation to worry about.”

Sif returned, her face grim. “We have resolved that you may...observe Thor for a brief time.”

“That’s all I should need,” Lucy said quickly. “You have my thanks.”

Coulson hit her with a look that could have cut glass, and she could feel Romanoff’s eyes boring into her back. She followed the warrior back into what could only be the stricken prince’s hospital room, Romanoff gliding behind her close as a shadow. Lucy swallowed. There was a huge man lying on a hospital bed in the center of the room. He looked like Beowulf, pulled out of legends but not alive yet. The Asgardians were uneasy and suspicious, waiting for her to make a move. And the entire room was smothered under a shifting, almost rotating gray pall, half-drowned in it. Small wonder they were all on edge. They could feel something desperately wrong, something beyond the obvious, even if they couldn’t put a name to it. 

The exception to the suffocating, life-leeching haze was a knot of gold light glowing in the prince’s chest. The corruption was circling the cord like a vortex. Vertigo clawed its way down her spine until she stopped looking at it. She’d seen this before. Seen it before and hoped never to see it again. What kind of monster had been responsible for this? How could they have trusted someone capable of ripping a person’s soul out and hurling it into the underworld? Killing was one thing, but this was an abomination. He’d never reincarnate, never move on to an afterlife, never return from the dead. He’d be left wandering with the shades, lost forever. Even necromancers considered it taboo, a curse too awful to level without incurring a terrible retribution, because the potential consequences of using it were too great. Consequences that were precipitating out of the ether right in front of her. This changed things. Drastically.

Lucy bowed slightly to the Asgardians and ignored the cold sweat prickling her skin. “I have seen enough. Thank you for your forbearance. I must, uh, consult with your allies for a short while. Please excuse us.”

She walked swiftly from the room and jerked her head toward the hall. “We need to talk, Coulson,” she said, pitching her voice low and quiet. “Privately."

Romanoff’s eyes went to one of the empty rooms, and Coulson nodded almost imperceptibly. Lucy followed the spy in, her mind churning. What had the file said? Seventy-three hours? And that had been...at least three hours ago. At least. And arrangements would still need to be made. That was bad for a human, and he was a god. And an alien. Hopeless. It was completely fucking hopeless. But if she _could_ pull it off....She couldn’t. This was beyond her. But if she _could_ , this would....Of course she couldn’t. Even trying would be practically suicidal. But if she _could_ , this would be the stuff of _legends_. And leaving it like this was unthinkable, anyway. Especially with an alien god. And it was wrong, on a fundamental and visceral level. If this was the level of warping in evidence after less than four days, it couldn’t be left alone.

And what if he had really been her brother? _It would make it infinitely more dangerous, dumbass_ , she thought to herself. She shouldn’t walk away from this. She should fix it. She should run away as fast as she could. Let the aliens invade. Let the pall spread, turn into a sinkhole, start spewing the monsters of the underworld back into the living world. Not her problem. There were other worlds out there, right? Mars was probably great this time of year. What had Earth ever done for her, anyway? Her nemesis could have fun trying to return the planet to the Ordovician Period around a swarm of horrors that had never existed. 

_Fuck_. She needed to fix this.

Coulson closed the door and crossed his arms, waiting patiently. Lucy opened her mouth and then stopped. She wasn’t going to make any sense. They could feel it but not see it. Their interaction with magic had never gone beyond the edges of what she’d shown them. She needed to focus. She couldn’t focus.

“Romanoff, do you think you could you slap me?” she asked, irrationally pleased with herself for managing to sound level.

The spy blinked. “You want me to slap you?” she asked slowly.

“No, I _want_ to flip that table over and scream like an enraged chimp,” she hissed. “But these aren’t my digs, and it’s undignified, and it probably wouldn’t go over that great with either our Viking overlords or Banner’s big green friend. So you slapping me seems like the marginally more reasonable method of reaching the same conclusion.” They both stared at her. “Seriously? You’ve wanted to shoot me since I blew that Helsinki job for you, and now that I’m _asking_ you to hit me, you’ve suddenly discovered your inner pacifist? This is bullsh--”

The force of Romanoff’s palm striking her cheek left her ears ringing and her mind suddenly clear.

“Southpaw, huh?” Lucy grunted. She touched the tip of her tongue to the inside of her lip and tasted blood. “Didn’t see that coming. Literally, in this case.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, bad news first, I guess. Amora got him with a spell that banished his soul to the underworld. That’s why he’s not waking up, healing, or dying for real. Worse news is that the odds of reversing this go down the longer it’s been in effect. Odds right now are...not great. Pretty bad, in fact. We’re kind of screwed, you could even say. Worst news is that if this goes on long enough, it could turn into a sort of funnel for what’s on the other side. Which it’s already kind of doing, so I think we’re past the ‘could’ stage and are into the ‘will’ stage on that one.”

“What’s the good news?” Coulson asked carefully.

“Oh, uh, there isn’t any.” Lucy spread her hands. “I’d have led with that if there had been. As I see it, we’ve got four options. The first one’s to sit and wait and hope nothing comes through and be very sad that he’s never coming back and that his soul is stuck in the underworld forever and try to weasel out of his parents blowing us to smithereens in retribution. The second one is to, um, try killing him properly and hoping that breaks the tether between his soul and his body. I’m guessing nobody’s down with that one, and it’s not likely to work anyway. It usually works with humans, but we belong here, and he doesn’t. And it doesn’t _always_ work with humans. And he doesn’t look like the kind of guy you could just casually smother with a pillow, anyway, even if his bodyguard wouldn’t skin us for trying. Third option is find Amora and make her reverse it. I’m guessing you haven’t had much luck on that yet, and by the time you nail her down, she’s probably not going to be able to reverse it.”

“What’s the last option?” Coulson asked, his voice steady.

“Someone goes in after him and tries to bring him back. It’s hard as fuck with humans. There’ve only been a few known cases of success. I have no fucking clue how him being what he is will affect that.”

“So we need a magician.”

Lucy coughed uncomfortably. This was undoubtedly the stupidest thing she’d ever done, she thought. Undoubtedly. No argument. If she lived a million years, she would never make another decision as insane as this. It wouldn’t be possible. This was the bottom of the barrel. Romanoff’s eyes narrowed. Coulson nodded to himself, almost absently, his gaze never leaving her face.

“You’ll need a magician, or as many magicians as you can find, to deal with Amora. I can’t imagine any scenario in which she’s capable of pulling something like this--and this is some seriously psychotic magic, so maybe you want to take a hard look at how close you want to keep Asgard if this and zombie heads and gods know what else is the sort of shit they’re cool with--and then takes kindly to it being undone.” Lucy sucked on her cut lip. _Close your eyes and jump_. “But you don’t need to be a magician to try the last option. Normal, ordinary humans are perfectly capable of getting to the underworld and then back out again. You just need to know what you’re fucking doing.”

“And you do?” Romanoff asked archly.

“As much as I ever know what the fuck I’m doing, yeah.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “But I gotta warn you, it’s a bad bet. Getting yourself back out isn’t that hard, if you keep your head in the game and have some idea what you need to do. Getting someone else back out is a different story. I mean, you know Orpheus, yeah?”

“I know you drunk-dialed me the last time you did this,” Coulson said. “You didn’t sound too happy.”

“I wasn’t. I’m not _now_. If I’d suspected this would be half the clusterfuck it’s turned out to be, I’d have taken my chances with the Hulk.” The adrenaline was wearing off. She sat down heavily and cursed the lack of comfort to be found in hospital chairs.

“Jones, I was serious about Fury not letting you live through this if you make it worse,” Coulson told her. She snorted, though she did appreciate that he sounded a little sad about it.

“As I am here in an advisory capacity only, you’re obviously free to go for either of the other plans I mentioned, or come up with your own strategy, or go confer with the Fraternal Order of Mystics and Mummers and see what they say,” she sighed. “But if this ticks over into day four in the meantime, consider my offer formally withdrawn. I’m not getting stuck in hell forever trying to fix something that can’t be undone. Getting shot twenty-odd times and then dumped out of a plane over open water is the _least_ unpleasant way out of this I can see right now.”

“Dead’s dead, Jones.”

Lucy laughed long enough for them both to look thoroughly uncomfortable. “Oh, fucking hell, Coulson,” she panted. “Dead’s dead, is it? Dead’s dead? The fucking things I’ve seen, and you stand there and tell me that dead’s dead.” She wiped her eyes. “If dead were dead, we wouldn’t be having this goddamn conversation. Thor would be a half ton of rotting flesh. Nothing would be hovering on the other side, hungry and waiting for a chance to sharpen its teeth on the bones of the living again.” She shook her head. “ _We_ ’d never have made it out of that warehouse and into Mimir’s tree. If I’ve shown you anything, I’d hope that it would be the precise opposite of ‘Dead’s dead.’”

“Widow, could you please wait outside?” Coulson asked. She did as he said, every fiber of her being protesting the order in spite of knowing Hawkeye was above them in case anything went wrong.

“Jones.”

“Coulson.”

“You’re serious about this.”

“I am fatally serious.”

“We could wait for the Asgardian healers.”

Lucy spread her hands. “I don’t know if there’s anything they can do. They don’t belong here, either. It’s like getting more people who also only speak English to try to translate for your French friends.”

“Okay. So, let’s assume SHIELD agrees to this. What do you want out of it?”

“Straight to the bottom line, huh, Coulson?” She sat back and thought for a moment. “I need a few sheets of paper.”

“Long list, then?” he asked, shaking his head.

“Not really, but this needs to be done by the book. This is almost always done by someone close to the person they’re bringing back. Parent, child, lover, bff, whatever. There’s a deep personal desire to save them. I just want that fucking portal closed. Doesn’t count. So the rules for hired help apply.”

“You don’t play by the rules, Jones,” he reminded her. She laughed.

“These are old rules. Older than us. They’re written in our DNA.” Lucy shrugged. “There’s no skirting them, not if this is going to work. So, paper?”

“Sif and the Warriors Three may not agree to this.”

“They don’t have to know. I just need to be close, I don’t need a line of sight or to be touching him or anything. Here works. Down the hall works, too. Hell, we could go up a floor and you could tell them I left the compound. If it’s a success, they get his highness back. If it doesn’t work, they’re none the wiser.”

Coulson studied her for a moment, then sent for a pen and paper. Lucy let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. It might have been smarter to play it like she could solve their problems and negotiate for a price, but she had the strong suspicion that Coulson would know something was up when he saw her list. He was halfway to thinking she still had her magic anyway, and she played for money 99% of the time. The price for something like this, though, it had to be something she wanted. Not what it was smart to want or easy to want or profitable to want, but what she actually wanted. Rites didn’t acknowledge fungible economy. It was barter or get the fuck out. 

Of course, that meant that if they didn’t agree to her terms, she was technically off the hook. This wouldn’t work without their cooperation. She’d have a clear conscience, which she was sure would be of great comfort during an interplanetary war or zombie apocalypse. Maybe she could live in it, like a hermit crab, if she had to move to the moon. She rubbed her face where Romanoff had slapped her. It still felt a bit red; the spy had definitely gotten some frustration out there. 

If SHIELD didn’t play ball, she was gone. She was smoke in the wind. If she couldn’t stop this, she didn’t want to be anywhere near it when everything went down. If SHIELD did, and she managed an extraordinary rendition on their broken god, what then? She frowned. She’d likely be sidelined for a few days. Not unable to do magic, no, but unable to rely on it. Vulnerable. The last time she’d done anything close to this, she’d spent a week feeling worse than the time she’d gotten trampled by a herd of elephants. She needed something more than her smile to flash in the event that something--mundane, magic, or other--happened. By the time Coulson returned with what she’d asked for, she had it.

He watched her silently as she scrawled a list on one page and read it just as silently when she handed it to him.

“This is no time for jokes, Jones,” he growled after he’d read it a second, then a third time.

“No joke,” Lucy said. “I’m a creature of simple, if intensely self-destructive, tastes.”

“You forgot the clean record and new identity for yourself,” he said flatly. “You’re not going to get very far in your new life with the lover who shot you in the back-- _twice_ \--if you’ve still got all your outstanding warrants tagging along.”

“If that’s what’s sticking in your craw, I can almost guarantee she’s not going to accept any kind of deal. And what am I going to do with a clean record besides fuck it right back up again?”

“Then why--”

“One last chance, Coulson. I want her to have one last chance. She’s not going to take it, I’m sure, but I want her to have it.” She managed a brittle smile. “Just be glad I never wanted to be an astronaut when I was a little girl. You’d have a hell of a time explaining why a super-felon is being allowed on the space shuttle instead of arrested.”

“At this point, Stark could just buy you a ticket. I have to confess, this is not what I expected.”

“Are the terms acceptable, or not?”

“Your ring back, if it ever falls into SHIELD custody, a clean slate for the ex-fiancee you haven’t seen in years because she tried to murder you for said ring, access to Morgan le Fay’s SHIELD file, a bottle of dark rum, your brass knuckles, your lighter, and a pack of cigarettes. This reads like you’re too simple to be signing contacts. You understand that, right?”

“If it would make you feel better, I could add a six-figure sum, payable to whatever charity Stark is humping this week.”

“It would, actually.”

Lucy took the paper back and wrote it down verbatim. Coulson messaged Fury. “If you get clearance on this, I want my lighter and the brass knuckles back before I go under. And we’ll need to seal this with blood and then burn it, so bring some alcohol wipes and a pair of lancets.”

“Lancets? That seems a little...”

She shrugged, most of her attention on the glyphs she was sketching on the spare page Coulson had given her. “Most things that call for blood aren’t super picky about how it gets there. The brass knives and mistletoe sprigs and stone axes are typically just some asshole showing off for the plebes.”

“What happens if this doesn’t work?”

“If Fury says no?” She finished a stylized hand and carefully corrected a shark’s head. “I don’t know. I guess you guys come up with something else. Not really my problem at that point.”

“If you don’t come back.”

“Oh.” She folded the paper and tucked it into her bra before handing Coulson back his pen. “Cremated, ashes scattered in the nearest ocean, and under no circumstances should you notify anyone you’ve become convinced are my next-of-kin. If I don’t come back but my body keeps going, I guess let Romanoff get the little surprise party I threw her the last time she tried to kill me out of her system, then, you know, cremation, ashes scattered, no notification.” Coulson’s eyebrows rose. “Well, _clearly_ , I am planning on coming back, but you really wouldn’t be doing me any favors keeping my body alive if I didn’t. And my next-of-kin are headcases, so I’d prefer you not roll out any of your trademarked SHIELD condolences at them. You people are epically bad at breaking terrible news.”

Coulson’s comm blinked. He looked at the message. Lucy didn’t need to be particularly adept at mind-reading to tell it was from Fury and that he was not particularly happy, even for Fury. Coulson tapped out a short message, sent it, and then looked at her for a moment, considering. “You said anyone could do this, if they knew what they were doing.”

“Yup.”

“It’s a skill that can be taught.”

“Yup.”

“Prove it. Show me how it’s done.”

Lucy sat back, thinking for a moment. She appraised him with a more critical eye than she usually turned on him. He had the right temperament for it. It might bring him some comfort in a field with a high mortality rate. Hell, it might even save his ass someday. “Sure. Why not? If drunken Greek shepherds could pick it up, no reason you couldn’t. Three things, though. First, you’re not coming with me on this. It’s going to get ugly, even for a nosedive into the afterlife, and you’d be a novice.” He nodded. “Second, this is the sort of thing you can’t unsee, once you’ve seen it, and not everybody really cares for what they’re looking at. Just be sure you want to cross that threshold first. Third, this isn’t without risk. I’m very, very good at this, but shit happens. It’s conceivable we could draw a bad hand, and you’d be looking at madness or death.”

“I understand. Is that it?”

“I’d think that would be more than enough. If you’re cool with it, you’d need somebody to set you up with a mild dose of ketamine. I don’t like pharmaceuticals as an assist with this sort of thing, but it’s hard to argue with their reproducibility and easily-observable safety protocols.”

“I never figured you for a purist.”

“I’m not. Absinthe and jimsonweed are both traditional _and_ extremely shitty. Peyote and toads are very good when they work, but they’re unreliable. Pot and heirloom tobacco are workhorses, but they’re difficult for beginners to use.” She shrugged. “Alcohol and sensory deprivation are cheap and effective and old-school but occasionally produce results that are beyond fucked. But I’d rather take a couple of tries and doing something like this well to just doing it quickly. If you were some jerk off the street, it would be peyote and a week in the wilderness, hands down. I’m guessing you don’t have a lot of spare time to just dick around, though. I’m also not up for surviving this just to have Fury turn around and swear eternal vengeance on me for accidentally lobotomizing you. So quick and safe but rough-around-the-edges it is.”

Coulson’s comm blinked again. He checked it. “We’re go. Your terms have been accepted.”

“Well, then. Let’s get to work before I remember what a terrible fucking idea this is and develop selective amnesia.”


	11. Chapter 11

Clint leaned against the wall, his shoulder against the door jamb and his eyes on Jones and Phil. He’d relocated them to the room directly below Thor’s. Steve and Jan were on guard outside. Natasha was technically off-duty and should have been resting, but he could almost feel her in the central security room, monitoring video feeds. He shot a quick, small smile at the security camera pointed at them.

Jones tapped a lancet on the counter idly as she rubbed an alcohol swab between her forefinger and thumb and watched the clock. After thirty seconds, she tossed the swab and stuck her thumb at the edge of the pad. Phil cocked his head.

“Less pressure on the wound, less pain while it heals,” she explained, coaxing several large drops from the puncture. She pressed them onto the paper next to her signature and her hiring price.

“How often do you do this?” he asked, startled.

“This, specifically? First time.” Jones snorted. “I give blood every couple of months, though, so, you know. You get a little sick of them taking the hematocrit sample someplace that’s going to twinge for a few days. Your turn.” She flicked the contract across the table to him. “Same thing as I did. Mark it in blood next to your name and your terms.”

Phil copied her technique. Clint winced a little as Phil pressed his bloodied thumb to the paper. Even if she was depowered, this still struck him as too close for comfort to a deal with the devil. His eyes shifted from Phil to Jones only to find her looking at him. He rubbed his arm.

“Not bothering you, is it?” she asked. “It should have been good as new.”

“Focus, Jones,” Phil said sharply. He pressed a band-aid to his thumb, and she folded the contract neatly into thirds.

“If I focus, I’m going to bolt and take my chances with your flying excessive force complaint,” Jones retorted evenly. “Okay, give me your hand. Other hand.” She clasped his hand and picked up her lighter. The light glinted on the worn Pallas Athene emblem on the side facing Clint. “Hold the paper up?”

“Careful,” Phil warned. She flicked the lighter open and touched the flame to the upper edge. It caught, and he held it as long as he could, then let it fall to the metal surface of the table. They watched it burn to ash.

“Done.” Jones released his hand and got up. She glanced at the clock. “I’m going to do my damnedest to have him back by dawn, so you might want to be ready to roll when the sun comes up.”

She took off her jacket and hung it on the back of her chair, tucked the lighter into a pocket, and stretched.

“Go time,” she muttered to herself. 

Phil touched her shoulder gently. Clint recognized the gesture and tamped down a flutter of jealousy. He couldn’t remember the last time Phil had tried to recruit someone for so long. Jones gave him a long look, then covered his hand with her own for a second before sliding away from him. She hopped onto the hospital bed and lay flat, crossing her ankles and turning her palms up. She closed her eyes and relaxed. Her breathing slowed and steadied until it was the regular rhythm of a deep sleep. Clint forced himself to unwind a little.

“This gonna work?” he mouthed to Phil.

Phil shrugged. “I hope so,” he mouthed back.

They both settled into a chair to wait.

*****

Lucy slipped from her body and shook herself, reordering her mind. She glanced quickly at Coulson and Hawkeye, then out at Captain America and the Wasp. They were all alert and ready for danger. Her body was as safe as it could be without her in it. She forced herself to let go fully. She could feel the miasma in the room above them. Go time, indeed. She shivered again, folding and changing until she had the aspect of a large magpie, and flapped upward through the ceiling.

Hogun and Volstagg sat on either side of Thor’s bed. Sif was guarding the door from the outside. She perched on the arm of Hogun’s chair, surveying the situation. The haze had thickened, and its rotation was more distinct. The light in his chest was clearer from an astral vantage point, and it pulsed softly with the beating of his heart. She spread her wings and launched herself, gliding to him. She landed above the light, cocked her head to fix one eye on it firmly, and then dove into it.

Lucy kept her wings and feet tight against her body until the brilliance faded and the tug of gravity reasserted itself. When she opened her eyes again, she was outside the light and could see it clearly for what it was: a cord the color of molten gold, thick as her wrist, pulsing with the prince’s life, and stretching between his errant soul and his abandoned body. It glowed like fire, a thing of shocking beauty against the depthless, mottled gray of the sky. She just needed to follow it to find him. She unfurled her wings and caught the cold wind of limbo, coasting on it toward the gates of the underworld.

It veered away at the last moment, looping over and around the three gates, and disappeared into one of the white cliffs. Lucy slipped into the high, narrow crevice after it, wondering how the hell the prince had managed that. Everyone went in through the gates. She spilled out into the green light of the underworld at night. She wheeled for a moment, circling to mark the place he’d come in through. A snarling stone dragon’s head looked back at her, its stalactite fangs limned with soot and its carved eyes green with lichen. It was oddly out of place. She’d never found anything quite like it in her travels through the edges of the underworld. 

Lucy beat her wings and flew on, tracing the cord as it spanned the beaches where the dead massed and the black river where the ferryman looked up at her from his boat and narrowed his strange goat’s eyes, his lips curling back to reveal wolf’s teeth and a serpent’s tongue. He was doubtless still peeved with her over the trouble she and one large sack of copper coins had caused on a previous journey. _Too bad_ , she thought. _You shouldn’t have been a jerk about letting me cross_.

She caught an updraft at the mountains on the other side of the river and tried to calculate how far a god who didn’t belong there could possibly have gotten in over three days. How far could _she_ have gotten in three days, if she really put her shoulders into it and didn’t run into any trouble? Maybe almost to the other side. Maybe. How far could she have gotten in three days if she was just dicking around? Probably the little valley with the lush greenery and weeping willows between the shadow plains and the swamps. It was a nice place. Most people lingered there, given the chance. It wasn’t too far if ‘as the crow flies’ could be applied literally. That was assuming he’d stuck to one of the roads, of course, but it was hard going in the wilds, and she couldn’t imagine he’d have much reason to stray. A sudden whirlwind buffeted her, and she dove and looped into a sidestream, avoiding it as she began climbing again. The winds were treacherous here, but she didn’t have time to waste walking. 

Lucy crested the mountain and paused, tilting her wings just enough to let her hover where she was for a moment. The cord ran straight through a patch of dead brambles in a small valley. How the hell had he even gotten through there? She spiraled down slowly and carefully. They were brown and seasoned. The canes were tough, and the thorns were long as daggers, with sharp and brittle tips. She perched on them and considered how the fuck she was going to clear them out. She didn’t see a blood trail marking the ground or the thorns, but that didn’t mean much in a place like this. That the cord ran through them only meant that he’d made it through, nothing more. Lucy scanned the landscape, looking for any of the beasts that haunted the trails and paths. She saw nothing. Still, she should get rid of them before they made it back. They might not have time on the return, and, while being here did magnify and concentrate her power, she wasn’t confident that she could manage underworld thorn-bushes as well as an unruly god at the same time.

“Don’t bother, little sister. These briars are mine.” Lucy almost jumped out of her feathers at the voice. It sounded like the blast of trumpets and the beat of war drums. She looked around. A bright green hummingbird half again as big as her darted from behind to hover before her, his head remaining oddly still while the rest of his body swayed slightly. His eyes were brilliant as the sun, and his beak was bright and crimson with blood. _Oh, shit_.

“Um, hi. Uh, I’m really sorry about not having time to talk to you before?” she offered, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.

“Yes. I believe you were, how did you put it, ‘fucking busy’? Rather a crass way of putting it, if I do say so.”

“I’m rather a crass person. Usually. I, uh, try not to be quite so crass around gods, but I was a little, um, distracted just then. Personal business, you know. I’m all ears now. Especially if maybe you wouldn’t mind calling your plants off afterwards?”

The hummingbird’s tongue flicked out twice, lapping some of the blood from his beak. “Of course. I only summoned them because I needed to speak with you. I know what it is you seek here.”

“Yeah? Great, great. That’s great news.”

“Hush and listen,” he snapped. “My sister wishes to keep him here. She will challenge you and try to take him from you.”

Who was his sister again? She wracked her brain. Oh, right. The goddess of venomous serpents, stinging insects, and black magic. She was pretty sure murder and treason were somewhere on the second tier, too. “Huh, you know, I think I left something in the overworld. I’m just going to run home and get it.”

He shifted suddenly to block her path. “Cowardice does not suit you, little sister, nor does the pretense that you will leave empty-handed.”

“It’s not really a pretense!” Lucy protested. “You know I can’t beat a goddess here.”

“You have a right to him, and she does not. She is not permitted to take him from you by force, though she’ll intimate that she will, I am sure. She will offer to barter with you for him. She will promise you that which you desire most out of life. She will give you her word that she will close off his path back to the world of the living so that no harm will come to it. You would do well not to accept her gifts or credit her oaths. They are more costly than they appear.”

“Good to know.” She tried to ignore the way the gore on his beak never seemed to dry. “What does your sister want with him? And why are you so eager to sell her out? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“We are blood, but we are not of one mind. She struggles to overthrow me, and I struggle to keep my place. As for what she wants with him, why does anyone seek to bind a deity? We are mighty. The foreign godling’s power is strange, but it is power nevertheless. If she could bend him to her will and make a vassal of him, she would be far stronger than she is now.”

“No offense, but you guys are typically way more trouble than you’re really worth. I’d think that would be true even for another god.”

“He would likely prove so, yes, but I’d prefer not to take the chance of my sister gaining the upper hand in this. You wish to rescue the stranger for your masters.” Lucy bridled at the term but held her peace. “I wish to see him gone from this realm. I do not always count you as one of mine, but we are in accord in this, you and I. So I offer what assistance I can give without upsetting the scales too greatly.”

“You have my thanks,” she sighed. “I think.”

“On your way, then, little sister.”

The thorns crumbled to sand below her, and Lucy flapped her wings awkwardly, trying to gain some altitude after the unexpected loss of her perch. She finally managed it and began coasting along over the cord again, following it wherever it was leading her. She laughed grimly to herself. And here she had thought this ending with a shoot-out or the Hulk smashing everything or a fight with a normal sorceress would be the _bad_ outcome. 

At least Hummingbird’s warning that she’d have to face his sister if she wanted to bring Thor back to the land of the living implied a certain amount of confidence that she could actually subdue or persuade Thor once she found him. The hope she’d previously entertained had been based solely on the likelihood that, while he was almost certainly stronger than her in an absolute sense, he would not yet have learned how to use the nature of this plane as a force multiplier. If he kicked and fought against being removed from whatever illusory paradise or lost loved ones he found here--an almost universal reaction--she would be able to physically overpower him and drag him forth, or manipulate the magic here to trick him into leaving. Even in her own estimation, it had been rather tenuous reasoning. Below her, the dead made their way across rope bridges spanning the distance between the mountains and the plain on the other side. It was a grim and quiet procession; most of the people were still in shock from their deaths and ambivalent about their journeys. The bridges emptied onto bleached white roads that stretched away in all directions across the gray plateau, the paths shining like beacons from her aerial vantage point. Lucy shivered and focused on the cord and its golden heartbeat.

The cord followed one of the roads until the slate plateau gave way to grassland. Lucy followed it astray for a moment before realizing that it had wrapped around a papaya tree before returning to the road.

“Hey, you!” someone yelled from the ground. “Yeah, you, with the feathers! Give me a hand here, will you?”

She spotted a large dun rabbit sitting up on its hind feet, and a quick glance at the white fletching on his chest confirmed that she knew him. She settled into the papaya tree. “Hi, Rabbit. Make it quick. I’m kind of in a hurry here.”

“Oh, it’s you.” He snorted. “Don’t you sass me, Lucha. If it weren’t for me, you’d still be stalling the death-lords with shadow-puppets and sleight of hand and volunteers from the audience,” Rabbit said, puffing out his chest. “I saved the day.”

“Yes, yes, I’m very grateful for your help,” Lucy grumbled. “It wasn’t my fault that was a complete shitshow, though.”

“Yeah? Whose fault was it, then? The ten-year-old’s?” He folded his ears back in disapproval. “I thought she did okay, for a kid.”

“She was fifteen, and yes, she did good for a kid. It wasn’t her fault, either. I meant more that there’s some fantastic mismanagement going on when we were the two best candidates for that little re-enactment.” She preened her wings irritably. An untrained teenager and a drunken tourist getting tasked with re-breaking death’s power was what happened when somebody important decided to just phone it in for a very long time. “But I’m kind of on the job here, Rabbit. What do you need?”

“Drop me down a couple of those papaya,” he demanded, falling back on all fours and retreating a few paces. “Are you really working for Hummingbird? I don’t hold with those guys much. Too full of themselves. Think they’re better than us just because they get on flags and crests and tourist brochures.”

“No, I’m not working for Hummingbird. I guess he’s involved in it now, though.” Lucy hopped out along the branch and pecked at a stem until one of the heavy fruit fell to the ground. “I’m looking for the guy this goes to.” She pointed to the cord with her wing. “He needs to come back topside with me.”

“You’re looking for him? Got your work cut out for you, then,” Rabbit laughed around a mouthful of pulp. She dropped another papaya to him.

“Yeah? How do you mean?”

“He seemed nice enough. He tried to help me out, and he doesn’t even know me. Not much of a tree-climber, unfortunately. But he’s big as a mountain and glows like the sun and lost as a moose in the desert. Good luck sneaking him past Grassflower once you find him.” Rabbit snickered. “Maybe you could spike a squash on the ground in front of her and yell ‘In your face!’ when it bursts all over the place. I bet that would do the trick.”

“You’re not helping,” Lucy sulked, pulling down another papaya for him.

“And you’re just lucky the death-lords were defeated the first time when everybody was still dumb as a box of rocks. If you’d been trying to con anybody who gets basic cable, they never would have bought the line about your power being so great that you could turn a human head into a gourd at will. You know they still think you’re really called Oz?”

“None of you get basic cable, Rabbit,” she groaned. Stupid death-lords.

“Pfft. Shows what you know.” He buried his face in the papaya and thumped the grass with one of his feet. “They run those fiber-optic cables underground sometimes. And who gets a piece if it burrows into the earth but doesn’t stay there?” He touched his chest with one paw. “That’s right, lady. _Us_.”

“Congratulations on your access to talk shows, sitcoms, and 24-hour news,” she said drily.

“Hey, if you get yourself dead on this one, why don’t you drop by sometime? We all get together and watch Drag Race every week, kind of make a night of it. Just bring a pumpkin or some timothy hay or something,” Rabbit said, rubbing his muzzle with his paws.

Lucy tilted her head. “Sure. At least that way there’s a silver lining to the dark lady tearing my wings off and stuffing them down my throat.”

“See? Things ain’t so bad.” He sneezed, and one of his ears flopped to the side. “Be seeing you one way or another, Lucha.”

“Bye, Rabbit.”

She crouched and sprang into the air, circling back to the road. She’d much rather forget about the whole incident with the death-lords, honestly, but it didn’t seem to be in the cards. They needed to be fought and bested again every so often to keep them from re-asserting their power over the living. She got that, she really did, but it was a local thing. The pair best suited for the challenge were supposed to be trained and sent down, with full instructions on what they needed to do. She, on the other hand, had gotten unexpectedly dragged out of a skeevy nightclub by an angry shaman and bundled off to the underworld with a bad translation of the Popol Vuh, a head full of mescaline, an angry speech that boiled down to “you people broke it, you people are going to fix it,” and a frightened local girl who’d barely had a full month of her magic being awakened and no proper introduction to the art.

Lucy traced the cord’s path over rye rows and untended gardens. Eventually the untended gardens gave way to feral scrub and ruined houses, then to the swamps where only a few roads ran. She found that the cord stuck to one of them, to her great relief. The swamps were a wretched place, and getting back out of them was just as messy as getting lost in the first place. She pressed on. She was getting close to the near edge of the large sweep of greenery and rivers and shade where she expected to find him. Most of the roads cut through it at some point, and by the time most of the dead reached it, they had begun to accept what had happened. It was a place of rest, a safe place to stray and think and wander. Some of the roads had come so overgrown from lack of direct traffic through the sward that they had narrowed to thin white ribbons barely visible from the air.

“Oh, come on,” Lucy hissed to herself. The cord kept going. The first thing past the green was the shadow plain. While it would probably be easy to get him out of there if that’s where he’d landed--it was a terrible, awful place--she wasn’t exactly keen on going in herself. She had enough guilt weighing on her that it was dangerous. She beat her wings harder. 

If it came to it, she’d hit fast and hard and get him moving before the monsters that crawled from the dust and the gaps there could regroup. The grass was beginning to thin below her, and the trees were becoming smaller and less frequent. The rivers and brooks veered away, following their courses elsewhere. Why the hell couldn’t he have just sat down on a tussock somewhere and taken a nap? What sort of stupid prick was he that he saw the landscape changing like this and thought it would be a great idea to keep going? She didn’t want to fight Hummingbird’s terrifying sister, and she didn’t want to fight those ugly bastards made of guilt and regret and things left unsaid, and she didn’t want to spend the rest of eternity watching reality tv with talking rodents. This whole thing was bullshit, and it was decidedly unfair that she had to clean up a mess she hadn’t even gotten to make.

By the time she spotted the missing prince, she’d managed to marshal enough self-righteous ire over the general predicament to carry her through. He was on his knees, with his face in his hands and hemmed in on all sides by the shroud-robed monstrosities endemic to the plains. They had the bodies of spiders, the size and posture of humans, and the hunger for penance of the unavenged dead. She couldn’t hear the specifics of what they were whispering to him, but she knew the gist of it. They fed off grief and remorse and self-doubt, magnifying it and mirroring it and encouraging it until there was nothing else left. The dim green light reflected off their chitinous black hands as they reached for him, one after the other, each taking its turn. Lucy swallowed thickly and climbed, gaining altitude with every wingstroke. She fucking hated spiders. She fucking hated spiders, and she fucking hated these things, and she couldn’t make out their words, but she could still hear their voices. Their dry, hissing, rustling voices sounded like dessicated corpses turning the pages of old books. Lucy tucked her wings close against her body and dove headlong. Hit fast and hard, she thought. Fast and hard and then get him moving before they could regroup.

She changed feathers and wings for her own shape at the last possible second.

“Death from above, motherfuckers!” She landed on the largest spider, rolled, and came back up on her feet in one smooth motion. It crumbled into a fine chalky dust when it struck the ground, bursting into a spray of powder as it fell. She twitched her fingers, and an old straw broom materialized in her hand. “No snakes in the house! It’s the law! Out! Houses are for people! Back to your snake-hole!”

“ _...what?..._ ”

The next one’s blank piebald face had a second to tilt in confusion before she brought the broom down square on it, to the same effect. The next one barely had time to curl its pedipalps back to show its fangs before it suffered the same fate. 

Lucy had threshed her way through the rest of them before she realized quite what she was yelling. Oh, well. She could do worse than her grandmother’s reaction to finding a rattlesnake as thick as her forearm in her kitchen. She took a good look at the broom. It was the same damn broom she’d used to sweep the rattlesnake right back out the front door, too. She shook her head. The underworld was where things wound up after the living couldn’t keep them anymore. 

She brushed the dust from her clothes and turned to the Asgardian. Rabbit had been right. He looked big as a mountain, even kneeling as he was. His hair was the color of spun gold, his eyes were a blue she’d never seen outside of a clear bright sky, and he was staring at her like he didn’t believe what he was seeing. Given that she had dropped out of the sky screaming nonsense and attacking spider-beasts with a broom, he might not believe it. There was a brilliance to him that made her think he might blind her if she looked at him too long. That was probably the lightning, she thought to herself. It was odd. She wouldn’t have expected a storm god to have such a bright aspect. She extended her hand to help him up. _Shock me and you’re on your own, dude_.

“We should get out of here. They can’t actually be killed, and it won’t take them long to pull themselves back together.”

He reached for her hand tentatively, his eyes never leaving her face. He grasped it gingerly, like he expected her to be a mirage, then with an almost painful firmness when he found that she was solid.

“You’re real,” he whispered. “You’re really here.”

“Real as you,” she agreed, pulling him to his feet. “Seriously, though, we need to--”

Lucy found herself cut off by a bear hug that lifted her off her feet and made her ribs creak. He buried his face in her neck. “You came for me.”

_Well, this is a little unexpected_ , she thought. Lucy squirmed a bit, loosening his grip and making him drop her. She pointed to where a pile of dust was already coming back into the shape of a spindly hand, the sickly white darkening and hardening. It pulled itself forward, digging its claws into the hard dirt, and more dust began to resolve into an arm behind it.

“We need to go, and we need to go _now_. Come on.” She caught him around the wrist and began pulling him after her. 

He followed willingly enough, which was something, but they weren’t going to be fast enough to outrun the spiders once they dropped back to all eight legs. He was keeping up with her for now, but his breathing was already labored. He’d been here on his own for over three days; he was tired and drained and didn’t know what he was doing. _Think, Lucy, think_. Her grip tightened on the broom. Golden oldies it was, then. He stumbled. She stopped, took a deep breath, and pulled him close. She could hear them crawling across the rocks and feel their breathed accusations. “ _...unworthy...failure...monster..._ ”

“Hold on,” she told him. She swept the broom handle behind them, gripped it carefully, and then launched them skyward. Thor wrapped his arms tighter about her waist, his head resting between her shoulder blades. She could practically feel him screwing his eyes shut, and she envied him the luxury. It would have been difficult enough to balance on the broomstick by herself. With him, it was impossible, and they were wobbling all over the place. She was more than a little proud of herself for at least swinging a decent clip in a generally forward direction. They just had to make it back out of the flats and back to the green, she told herself. Once they were there, she could put down and reassess and figure out something that didn’t involve flying back across the underworld upside down and sideways. 

Lucy poured more speed into it, squinted against the wind, and desperately tried to keep them upright. They crashed unceremoniously into a grass-frocked hill when she failed. The broom tumbled from her hands and vanished, and she came to a rest on her back, breathing hard and reasonably certain that she hadn’t broken anything, insofar as that was possible here. There had to be a better way to carry him with her.

“Anybody who ever said anything about witches flying on brooms was a fucking liar,” she groaned, sitting up. She flexed her fingers in the lush vegetation. They’d made it, at least. She got to her feet and saw their pursuers hovering at the edge of their own domain.

“In your stupid spider faces!” she crowed. “Whoo! I won, bitches! How you like me now?”

The pack roiled and hissed. “ _...gloater...arrogant...mercenary...unsportsmanlike conduct..._ ”

She made a few rude gestures at them and turned back to Thor. “You okay there? Good fucking thing you didn’t make it that far into their territory. I did not expect you to be that heavy. Or brooms to be that unstable. Which I guess in retrospect should have been obvious, on both counts. Even if you weren’t so damn big, that wouldn’t have worked.”

He still seemed a little stunned, but he got to his feet carefully.

“You came for me,” he repeated softly.

“Well, somebody had to. You can’t just leave people in the underworld when they don’t belong there. Causes all sorts of problems.” Lucy stretched and cracked her neck. She pulled a few stray blades of grass out of her dark hair and brushed off her coat. If he weren’t so damn big, she could carry him. He watched her carefully, his expression suddenly unreadable.

“The underworld? This is not Helheim.”

Lucy knelt and reknotted her bootlaces. “I assume that’s what you call the underworld in whatever dimension it is you’re actually from, yeah? In which case, no, of course it’s not. It’s the underworld here, on earth. Part of it, anyway. If you were in Helheim, this wouldn’t be as big a problem.” She straightened. He had a question written on his face. “What?”

“I do not remember dying.”

“You don’t remember Amora suckerpunching your soul right out of your body?”

“Amora struck no mortal blows,” he insisted.

“Well, no. That’s sort of the issue, here. Your body isn’t dead. It’s up top, in a hospital, surrounded by your bros, worrying everybody sick. We need to get you back into it.” She made a smushing gesture with her hands, then stopped when he kept staring at her. “I’m not explaining this very well, am I? Let’s see, here. Amora attacked you while you were on earth. She used magic to separate your spirit from your flesh. Since you were on earth, you kind of got siphoned into our underworld. Or she put you here deliberately. Either way, you’re not really dead, but if we don’t get you back into your body, you’re going to die for real, and your soul’s never going to get where it needs to be, and also shit like that,” she jerked her thumb back at the shadow-plains, “will use the bridge you’re forming to cross over in the wrong direction. Since all of that is what’s technically known as ‘really really bad,’ we’re going to do our best to fix it. Right?” She looked at him hopefully, watching for any sign of understanding. She saw none. Lucy heaved a sigh. “I’m going to bring you back to life and save the world. Blink once for ‘okay,’ and twice for ‘fuck, yeah.’”

“You’re here to save me?” he breathed. There was something in the way hope and doubt collided in his voice and on his face that made her intensely uncomfortable. Lucy hunched her narrow shoulders. He should have been upset that he’d been jacked up in the first place, or wondering where his friends were, not awed that somebody he’d never met properly was here to rescue him.

“Yup,” she said.

“Does that mean you forgive me, then?”

Lucy shot him a blank look. For what? Getting lost? Working with SHIELD? Some foiled scheme that she hadn’t found out about yet? Whatever it was, presumably it wasn’t important enough to fuck up the world over.

“Sure thing. Forgiven and forgotten. Totally and completely.” She looked around. “You can’t fly, can you?”

He tilted his head. “Not without Mjolnir. You know that.”

Well, _that_ was putting a lot more faith in her intel-gathering capabilities than most people would. She’d drawn that conclusion from the reports she’d swiped in the past, but nothing had been confirmed, and Fury was damned good at counter-intelligence. “Will you let me transform you into something that I can carry, then?”

Thor looked resigned. “When have I ever been able to stop you?”

“Not often, granted, but that’s kind of a grim assessment,” Lucy grumbled. It wasn’t even like SHIELD called the Avengers in to deal with her that often. She looked at the golden cord that tethered him to his physical shape and snapped her fingers. “Hold still, this might feel a little weird.”

He shot her a long-suffering look as she looked him over. “Promise me one thing?”

“Way ahead of you, dude. Scout’s honor.” She held up her first three fingers. “I won’t drop you.”

“That is comforting, yes, but I want you to promise that you will come with me.”

Lucy stared at him. “I’m sure as fuck not staying here.”

“Please,” Thor said. “Swear that you will come with me.”

She suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. He didn’t seriously think he needed an oath to the effect that she wasn’t going to hang out in the afterlife? She looked into his eyes again. He _did_ seriously think that he needed an oath to that effect. What the hell was his problem? She clasped his hand.

“I swear on the spilled blood of my nemesis that I’m coming with you. Happy?”

He flinched. “It will do. Thank you.”

“I live but to serve,” Lucy muttered. “Hold still.”

She put her hands on his shoulders and reordered his shape in the blink of an eye. She was left with a long, thin wand--a spindle--the color of his hair. She wound a few inches of the cord onto it and smiled to herself. An apt transformation, for the time being, and an object that she could easily carry. She set it down carefully and shifted back into a magpie. She managed the graceless take-off and pressed the spindle tight against her belly as she fought to gain altitude. As much as she might begrudge the drag from her cargo while they were trying to avoid too much attention, it was infinitely better than trying to keep them both on the broom had been, and much faster than going on foot would have been.

Lucy checked the position of the moon. If she really put her back into it, she could get them back to the black river with plenty of time to spare. She flew on, the green rolling away below her. The spindle weighed against her claws as the thread of the prince’s life wound back onto it. It was warm and heavy and almost reassuring in her grip. She wondered what the hell had been up with him. Not that she felt like looking a gift horse in the mouth; she’d expected him to fight her tooth and nail, the way most people did after they’d had time to adjust to the underworld and start their journey toward reincarnation. That he hadn’t fought her at all was a relief. But...if she were in his position, she hoped she’d be at least a _little_ surprised if, say, the Leader showed up to bail her out. Fury had kept Thor on a fairly short leash since his initial fall to earth, and they’d never actually crossed paths. It was hardly inconceivable that he knew her from Stark’s compilation of her greatest flubs, but in that case, he really shouldn’t have been happy to see her. It was bizarre.

She soared over the swamps, keeping low against the canopy in an attempt to dodge scrutiny as the spindle grew brighter. The green gloom was deepening, which didn’t help matters much. She hadn’t counted on him changing on his own as they got closer to where they’d come in. It was like carrying a lantern in her claws. They’d barely cleared the brackish, indefinite edges of the wetland when a sudden downdraft left her out of control and scarcely able to avoid crashing into a ruined garden in front of a burned out shell of a house.

Lucy clutched the transformed prince close as she regained her balance. Sitting on a stone bench in the middle of the garden was a beautiful young woman with hair and eyes the color of the night sky. Or rather, Lucy amended, her hair was the color of the night sky. Her eyes _were_ the night sky, and pinpricks of starlight danced in them. A sharp smile graced full features, and slender fingers the color of cypress-stained lakes wound blood-red yarn around a plain wooden spindle in her lap. She looked up at them, and a crown of small scorpions shifted, gathering locks of her hair with their pinchers and tails and pulling it back out of her face.

“Welcome to my garden, little sister,” she purred. “Would you like to stay a while?”

“No thank you, Lady Grassflower,” Lucy coughed, shrinking back as much as she dared. A rattlesnake curled daintily around one of the goddess’s ankles, and a gila monster glared at her from under the hem of the woman’s skirts. “It’s very kind of you to ask, but I must be going.”

“What a pretty trinket you’ve found, magpie,” she murmured. “And what lovely thread! It makes my poor spindle seem so plain in comparison.”

“Oh, no, lady,” Lucy said quickly. “Your spindle is quite beautiful. You’ve ennobled it with your use, and it fits your hands so well.”

“Still, I find myself entranced by this little thing that you’ve shown me. Surely it burdens you to carry it?” she asked, her smile turning sweet. One of her scorpions plucked a sprig of white flowers from her tunic and made its way up her neck to tuck it behind her ear. Lucy’s face itched just from watching its progress, but the goddess gave no sign of noticing it.

“Oh, no, lady. I find its weight quite manageable,” she blurted. Hummingbird’s warning was heavy on her mind. _Watch for the bribe_ , she told herself. _Watch for the price_.

“That is a point in its favor, isn’t it? A golden spindle that doesn’t weigh on the fingers. Such a prize calls to me. Surely you don’t want it for yourself? What would a little bird want with thread and spinning when you have everything you need in your beak and your paws? If I could but have it for myself, I would snap that troublesome thread and reward you handsomely.”

“I’m fetching it for someone else, lady,” Lucy said carefully. _You can’t have him_. “I’ve promised to bring it to them.”

“Surely I’m just as good a master as the one you’re fetching it for, though,” Grassflower suggested, stirring slightly. The serpent at her ankle blinked sleepily and rattled once. “I think you would find my coin much better, into the bargain.”

“Doubtless, lady, but I swore an oath.”

“An oath of performance for payment, I’m sure,” she countered. “Why not allow me to make a better offer? I am the mistress of sorcerous arts ancient and new.” She held up her hand, and the spindle with its red yarn turned into a scroll. “Give me the spindle, and you shall have the undiscovered secrets and the forgotten knowledge of the living world from me in exchange.”

“You are most magnanimous, lady, but I swore an oath to fetch this back,” Lucy choked. “Nothing more and nothing less.”

“Such a pity,” the goddess clucked. The scroll turned into a tiny replica of her nemesis. “I am the mistress of that which bites and stings and creeps. Give me the spindle, and you shall have the power to defeat your enemy from me in exchange.”

“Your power is without limits, lady, but I swore an oath to fetch this back,” Lucy managed. “Nothing more and nothing less.”

“You drive a hard bargain, little bird,” she sighed. “Very well.” The sea scorpion turned into a pair of humans, holding hands and smiling at her from the palm of Grassflower’s hand. Lucy clutched at the spindle reflexively, its warmth anchoring her even as she felt the world tilt off its axis. “I am the mistress of forbidden practice. Give me the spindle, and you shall have your parents back from me in exchange.”

_Look for the price, look for the price, what she’s offering comes with a cost, what is it what is it what is it_....

It struck her like a bolt through the heart, and she sucked in a shallow breath at it. She could hardly have her parents back as they had been, almost twenty years ago now, without the undoing of what they had become since then, could she? If Grassflower gave her parents back, two other families would lose their children. The people they’d made of themselves in the meantime would be overthrown. They’d be, what, barely out of high school now? Just starting their adult lives. For her to have what she wanted, that would all have to be destroyed. She shuddered. Too great a cost. Far, far too great.

“The depths of your generosity are infinite, lady, but I swore an oath to fetch this back,” Lucy ground out. “Nothing more and nothing less.”

“I see.” Her aspect darkened and dimmed, and the scorpions in her hair raised their tails. “I am a goddess, and here I hold sway. I have offered fair trade for what I want, and you have denied me. I will have it, nevertheless.”

“You are a goddess, yes. Nevertheless, lady, I have sworn an oath to fetch this back. I will do nothing more than that, and I will do no less than that.” Lucy sprang into the air and beat her wings with all the power she could muster, holding onto the spindle with an iron grip and flying for their lives. _Come and take him, if you think you can. Just try it, if you think I passed up your gifts for nothing_. The garden below them erupted into a boiling mass of snakes and nettles, but Grassflower did not pursue them. Still, she didn’t dare slow until they looped around the papaya tree to unwind his thread. The spindle was heavy with thread, and her shoulders ached.

“No time for love, Dr. Jones?” Rabbit called.

“No time for anything, Rabbit,” she snapped, pulling away. “I just pissed off a goddess.”

“Better hurry! That lady is mad at you!” he yelled, his voice carrying on the wind.

Lucy groaned. They weren’t far now, but she was tiring quickly. The sun would be up soon. The green of the sky was paling almost to white on the horizon. 

She flew on, panting heavily. She was convinced that if the spindle weren’t growing uncomfortably hot against her skin, she wouldn’t be able to feel her feet at all. The bridges and the black river swept by below them. They were almost to the dragon’s maw. She resisted the urge to set down and rest in its mouth, well aware that if she did, she wouldn’t be able to get going again. Fucking hell, but he was getting heavy. The vaguely unpleasant Asgardian aura was beginning to reassert itself as well, and the touch of metal against her bare skin was reminiscent of a constant, mild static shock. She made her way slowly through the gap in the rock, careful not to smash into the cave’s walls out of fatigue. Once they were free of it, she put everything she had into climbing, reaching for the void, seeking the updrafts of limbo. The remainder of the cord was too bright to look at directly now, each steady beat like a solar flare. The terminus was close, so close. She dredged up another burst of speed at the sight of her goal, mentally gritting her teeth against the pain of every wingstroke. Thor grew heavier and she grew more depleted with every passing moment. _Almost there, almost there, almost there_....

And then the spindle was jerked from her grasp, the soul flying like a loosed arrow toward the body, and Lucy was free. She felt like she’d slipped a noose. Her heart blazed in her chest. A quick thought, and the reshaping was undone. Thor rippled back into his true form. His blue eyes cast about frantically, and his face registered a flickering succession of emotions she couldn’t quite identify when he spotted her far below him. Then he was gone. Lucy circled slowly, the wind ruffling her feathers. He’d looked desperate and stricken, but hell if she could tell why. Maybe the transformation had pained him? Had he felt the same discomfort she had from their contact? It couldn’t have been helped, but she was sorry if it were the case. 

The warping around the site of his departure smoothed and dissipated. Once she was satisfied that the anomaly was gone, she cut upward through the cloud cover and sought her own body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huītzilopōchtli (Hummingbird) and Malīnalxōchitl (Grassflower) are borrowed from Aztec mythology. Rabbit is from the Popol Vuh, a religious and historical text of one of the Maya kingdoms.


	12. Chapter 12

Lucy inhaled deeply, letting her senses snap back open before she tried to move. Chilled, artificially sterile air, bright fluorescent light on the other side of her eyelids, a rather hard mattress at her back, the sudden rustle of activity on the other side of the room, a thin blanket over her....She opened one eye cautiously and poked at the blanket. Hawkeye looked a little sheepish.

“You were cold,” he said.

She arched her eyebrows in question.

“You _seemed_ cold,” he clarified.

Lucy stretched a little, then propped herself up on her elbows. The inside of her mouth felt like she’d been eating cotton.

“How’s the prince?” she croaked. She squinted slightly against the remnant of the astral sight as she settled in fully. The room above them looked like it contained a small sun.

“He hasn’t woken up yet, but he’s sleeping normally instead of comatose,” Coulson told her. She didn’t fucking doubt it, with the amount of energy he was still spilling. “Some of the more minor injuries have already healed.”

“I think he got the stuffing knocked out of him a little while he was down there,” she said, “but he should be alert and active soon enough.” She sat up, flexed her fingers, and wiggled her toes. “For my next trick, I’m going to make a gallon of water disappear.”

“Why don’t you start with twelve ounces?” Hawkeye suggested, passing her a bottle. She twisted off the cap and drained it without pause. “Or I guess maybe the full gallon works, too,” he muttered, handing her another.

Lucy drank the second bottle more slowly, her eyes scanning the room. The table had a thick manilla file, a bottle of rum, and a pack of cigarettes sitting on it. Thank the fucking gods. She felt sliced open and half emptied out, and she didn’t want to put herself back together sober. “I suppose I’m not allowed to smoke those in here?”

“You suppose correctly,” Coulson said. “The captain has agreed to babysit you if you’d like to go to the ground level.”

“I think I would like that very much,” she said. She got to her feet after a few more minutes of experimental movement, after she was confident that she wouldn’t immediately faceplant onto the linoleum floor. She felt...not numb, not exactly, but too light for her body, shaky, and a little giddy. She needed some fresh air, and she needed to be away from people for a little while, and she needed some time to think about something besides what sort of tool turned down infinite knowledge and a shit-ton of power for a guy who, under other circumstances, would be throwing a magic hammer at her over property damage.

Lucy snagged another pair of water bottles, stuffed them in her jacket pockets, and scooped everything off the table. “I’m ready whenever he is.”

Coulson ushered her into the waiting room, where Rogers, van Dyne, and Banner were crowded around a monitor. They looked up when Coulson cleared his throat. None of them seemed to have gotten any sleep in the past twenty-four hours, and the Wasp looked as twitchy as Lucy felt. Banner smiled when he saw Coulson.

“Hank thinks he’s going to be just fine,” he said, collapsing into a chair. “Just fine.”

“Captain, would you please escort Jones to the ground level?”

Rogers nodded, and some of the tension that had drained out of his shoulders at the good news came stealing back in. He followed her to the elevator, then coughed slightly once they were inside.

“You, uh....Thank you. You did good,” he managed, unsure of what to say. Lucy shot him a cool smile as the platform began to rise.

“Damn straight I did,” she said simply. “I saved the fucking day.”

“Um.” He looked a little startled.

“Oh, sorry, was I supposed to get all mumbly and embarrassed and humble there?” she asked. “Say aww, shucks, mister, ‘tweren’t nothin’?” Rogers blushed, and she scoffed. “Yeah, you’re going to have to wait for something that actually isn’t anything for that out of me. And even then, it would probably be more along the lines of ‘No, seriously, guys, I didn’t do anything. That wasn’t me.’ than folksy bullshit.”

Lucy finished the second bottle of water and cracked her knuckles. She was beginning to get back on an even keel. Her hands felt raw and scorched, but the lingering psychosomatic unpleasantness should fade soon. She was still too happy by half, given the circumstances, which she suspected was going to catch up to her at some wildly inopportune moment. If she were one for introspection, she’d probably be wondering why it hadn’t once occurred to her to let go after she’d found the prince. _Good thing I’m not_ , she thought. She was just grateful he hadn’t pushed back or struggled. He might not have been quite able to bring her to a standstill, not with the way she could have leveraged the power of the place against him, but it definitely would have left her too tired to make it back. As it was, things weren’t that bad. She didn’t trust her magic, not entirely, but it was more her control of it than her power levels. She was a far cry from tapped out. The elevator doors opened with a clunk.

“Smell that air, Captain,” she said, inhaling.

“Gasoline, motor oil, and industrial cleaning agents,” he pointed out.

“Still smells like _something_ ,” she retorted. “More than can be said for the filtered-and-then-some air inside the bunker. You mind sitting in the sun?”

“There aren’t any benches outside the hangar.”

“I was planning on sitting on the ground.”

“Oh. I guess not, then.” He rubbed his eyes.

“What’d you do to piss Coulson off so bad he kicked you this job?” she asked, heading up the runway. Rogers tagged along, his brows furrowing.

“I don’t follow,” he said.

“Not to deride what I’m sure are your absolutely superior prisoner observation techniques, but you look dog-tired, and we’re in the middle of fucking nowhere. There’s no reason a pair of junior agents couldn’t watch me get drunk and read up on my enemies while you took a nap. I’m hardly going to run all the way to Salt Lake City. So, what’d you do?”

“I volunteered,” he grunted. 

“Ouch. Guess you kind of had it coming, then.”

Lucy stopped once they were properly outside and craned her neck. She found a sunny patch of dirt and plopped down on it, stretching out her legs and resting her back against the building. The captain’s eyes sharpened when she pulled out her lighter.

“I didn’t think the WACs were around anymore,” he commented, tilting his head. “I thought it was all just the army now.”

“They’re not. Well, not since ‘78, anyway. This was my grandmother’s.”

“She served during the war?”

“No such thing as _the_ war anymore, Captain. But yeah, she did. Stationed at Okinawa during the Korean War. Lady liked herself a good fight. That’s how she met my grandfather, actually.”

“In the army?”

“In a fight.”

Rogers snorted disapprovingly, unsure of whether or not to believe her. 

“You know, it turns out those things give you cancer,” he said when she tapped out a cigarette and lit it. She ignored him until the first one was a quarter gone, then exhaled and flicked the ash into the empty water bottle. Her frayed nerves were slightly less likely to unravel.

“I’m more concerned about emphysema, myself. You know what I am, hands down, the _most_ concerned about, though?” she asked. He gave her a long-suffering look. She smiled. “Getting shot in the face. Currently in a _very_ close second place--and I did not see this one coming when I got up yesterday morning--is getting sworded in the chest.” She took another drag. “I mean, I guess I would have ranked getting stabbed in general as kind of high up there thanks to the Negasynod and whoever let the Negasynod get into the cocaine, but with a sword? Nowhere on the fucking horizon. Gotta hand it to SHIELD there. They do keep life interesting.”

She popped open the bottle of rum and took a swig. It burned going down, sweet and sharp and spiced, and she sighed contentedly. She hadn’t had more than one shitty, watered-down well drink since the night Stark had swiped her ring. It hadn’t seemed like a good idea, given first her desire for stealth and then how many people shown up trying to kill her. Now, though, there wasn’t much to lose. If her enemies found her here, or SHIELD decided she’d outlived her usefulness, she had a full-on tantrum to detonate. _See how they like that, the hypothetical motherfuckers_ , she thought. 

Lucy closed her eyes for a moment and basked. She could feel Rogers, getting ready to say something about her drinking. For someone who’d signed himself up for a medical procedure that barely qualified as an experiment, joined the special forces, pulled a kamikaze dive into the ocean, and then settled on a career fighting superpowered monsters once he got over that, he was a hell of a mother hen. She wondered if that was some lingering doubt about the much likelier outcomes of a secret process used on a disposable 4-F with no next of kin, sublimated and turned outward. _Don’t look at it too hard, Captain. Maybe you’ll get lucky, and the bullet they’ve got ready for when your morals turn you into a problem will hit home before you realize what’s happening_.

She’d been floundering her way through similar emotional detritus when she’d decided to save Coulson and his sidekick. Of course, she’d also blown up a chain of HYDRA bases, precipitated an international diplomatic emergency, and replaced the audio from that year’s State of the Union address with Roosevelt’s fireside chats. The opposition party rebuttals had been a thing of strange and terrible beauty. It wasn’t hijacking the Jumbotron and threatening to nuke New York, but she dared anyone to say her reach hadn’t been felt as far as any of the heavy hitters’. 

She stretched further and picked up the hum of human activity below them and the animal activity around them. She could feel the blazing fire that was the sleeping prince, getting steadily stronger in its concrete cocoon. He’d be fine, she thought. Might take a few days, but he’d be good as new soon. The emergency crew who’d pushed past the dawn were beginning to fall asleep where they could as their replacements filtered on duty. Coulson was already trying to devise some way to stall her transfer to a more conventional facility, plagued by nightmare visions of her tearing up a SHIELD crew like she had countless merc teams. It was ridiculous on the face of it; the rules of engagement were completely different. _If somebody goes to the effort of trying to arrest you instead of just shooting a rocket launcher at you, it’s bad form to turn around and set them on fire_. She doubted he’d really believe her if she tried explaining it to him, though.

Lucy let herself drift a little further, away from the distinct minds of humanity and out into the desert. Things were content just to _be_ , there. Some of the awful need, the demand that something be _done_ , could be ignored from that vantage point. Lucy was was jerked back to herself by a sudden pain in her arm. It felt like she’d been stabbed with a brand, right over the bone callus from the break.

“Ow! Fuck!” she snarled, jumping to her feet and slapping at the injury. Rogers was on guard immediately, shield at ready, his attention divided between their surroundings and her. She found herself clutching a tiny ball of green feathers in her hand. Two eyes glinted brightly from its black-masked face and stared down a slim, blood-stained beak at her. She carefully rotated and opened her hand so that she was cradling the hummingbird in her palm. Her arm throbbed. “Oh, come on. What the fuck was that about?”

The bird darted to her bottle of rum, took a sip, and flew away without answering. Lucy rubbed the puncture mark. Rogers stared at her.

“Did you honestly just get bitten by a hummingbird?” he demanded.

“That wasn’t precisely a hummingbird,” she grunted, massaging her arm. It still felt like there was a live ember under her skin. “It was more like a small fragment of the consciousness of Huītzilopōchtli.”

“Gesundheit.”

She glared. “ _Dude_. He’s a god. Maybe save the jokes for the next time some penny-ante HYDRA spin-off accidentally names themselves after a sex toy.”

“That wasn’t a joke. That was really a name?” he asked. “Wait, you mean you just got bitten by a god?”

“I guess.” The sting was fading slightly. “Fuck me if I know why, though.”

“A god who is also a hummingbird?”

“Sometimes he’s also the sun. This one bottle could not possibly get me drunk enough to accurately explain how it works to you, Captain.”

“At this point, I’m not sure I want to know.” He shook his head and reached for her arm. “Here, let me see.”

“I’ll be fine. It’s not even bleeding,” she said, stepping back and cradling the injury against her chest. “And my tetanus booster’s up to date. Nothing to worry about.”

Lucy sat back down. Rogers hovered uncomfortably close, primed for action and with nothing to do. She glared at him, picked up the bottle of the rum, and started to take a drink.

“You sure you still want that?” he asked. “The god-bird-thing did just bite you and then stick its beak in it.”

“The day I’m too good to drink after a god is a dark day indeed,” she retorted, tipping it up. She made a face and swallowed with some difficulty. “Ugh.”

“Do I even want to know?” he sighed.

“That dickhead transubstantiated it into tequila.”

“The monster,” he agreed, face and voice completely deadpan.

“Hey, I went to hell and back for that rum. Biting me and turning it into tequila without even telling me is out of bounds,” Lucy said firmly. “Fuck it.” She capped the bottle and lit a new cigarette. “You see a herd of scorpions stampeding toward us, let me know.”

“Wait, what?”

“Nothing. Never mind.” She flipped open the file angrily and started skimming the pages. Stupid bitey hummingbird. Stupid fussy captain. Stupid nothing ever working out easily, why did everything have to be so fucking difficult all the time. She took a deep breath. _Narrow your focus, think about something specific, just shut down for a while before_ you _get stupid, too_. It was hard to avoid the bright pulse of the sleeping god below them, but paying attention to it was like pressing on a bruise. There was something profoundly irritating about the last look he’d given her before he’d vanished back out of limbo.

“You want to talk about what exactly happened when you brought Thor back?” Rogers offered.

“Nope.”

“Does it have anything to do with Huītz...Huītzilo...the hummingbird biting you?”

“I can only assume.”

“Why would it--”

“Goddammit, would you stop trying to debrief me and let me read?” she snapped. He stepped back a little, miffed.

Lucy frowned. Most of the file was composed of information she’d already known, or had been able to discover easily enough once she’d known it was le Fay that she was looking for. Some of it, on the other hand...

“Huh. Morgan le Fay and Doom are fuckbuddies. That explains a lot,” she muttered. “Who’d have thought she’d go in for humorless, anti-magic assholes?”

“Why did you want her file, anyway?” Rogers asked. “You’ve never worked with her before, and no offense, but I don’t think you’ve got much to offer her now.”

“This may comes as something of a surprise, Captain, but my first thought on realizing that Stark had my ring was not, in fact, ‘How many fire-fights can I get into in the next month?’.” She scowled. “I’ve got her to thank for that. Since I’ve never worked with her and never really done much of anything to piss her off, you can imagine my shock and confusion and _righteous indignation_ upon discovering that she was conspiring with my enemies.” He arched an eyebrow, his expression sceptical. “Doubt all you want, I was cut to the quick to find myself betrayed by a fellow magician. I mean, we’re a sacred brotherhood. You’d have to go back like, _almost a year_ to find another example of this sort of treachery.”

“Mind if I join the party? I brought pancakes.” Lucy looked up to see Stark approaching. He held up a styrofoam container and wobbled it at her, smiling. Well, it was more of a smirk, she decided. Stark didn’t really do smiles outside of the boardroom and photo-ops, and they were all professional-grade fakes. Fakes that somehow managed to convey the exact same invitation to slap it off him. It was actually an impressive trick. Still, she hadn’t had anything to eat since the Hulk had tracked her down.

“Fine,” she said. “Hand ‘em over.”

“Great. So, what stage in the shindig life-cycle are we at right now? Awkward-get-to-know-everybody, finally-found-our-groove, or too-drunk-and-only-losers-are-left?” he chirped.

“We’re at the part where Jones gets sarcastic about magician loyalty,” Rogers told him.

“That’s not a benchmark, Captain. I’m _always_ sarcastic about magician loyalty,” she pointed out.

“Well, why are we being sarcastic about magician loyalty today?”

“Something about Morgan le Fay,” Steve sighed.

She opened the box and found a short stack of pancakes and a small mountain of jelly packs. She shot a questioning look at Stark.

“Commissary only had fake syrup,” he explained with a shrug.

“Never figured you for the sort of guy who could combine breakfast with a threat,” she muttered.

“I’m just going to ignore the insult implied there and say that Clint did it,” Stark replied blithely, plopping down next to her and grabbing for the rum.

“Hawkeye? Yeah, I can see that. I can also see you not volunteering the information unless you had to,” Lucy snorted. She batted his hand away from the bottle.

“I think he was only trying to be nice. Your file says you don’t like fake syrup, he doesn’t slather your breakfast in fake syrup. You did save Thor and, you know, _his arm_ , after all. And yes, okay, maybe I’ll steal credit for that if he’s too busy falling asleep in his cheerios to bring it out here himself.”

“It’s nice to know my pancake preferences are a matter of national fucking security.”

Stark shrugged. “Never know when it’s going to come in handy. Are you seriously not going to let me have any of that? I’m the one who made the liquor run for it.”

“Then you should have picked up one for yourself while you were there.”

“But Coulson told me if I came back with more than one bottle, he was going to let Natasha taser me as much as she wanted the next time I got out of line. And you know me, Jones. I’d last two seconds if he ever took her off the chain.”

Lucy gave him a level look, then sighed. “Fine. You may have one shot’s worth.”

“Thank you. Was that so hard?” He grinned at her and took a swig. He barely stopped himself from spitting it back out. “Jesus. That’s tequila.”

“Yup,” Lucy said around a mouthful of pancake and strawberry jam.

“Steve, how is this tequila?”

“I’m a little fuzzy on the details,” Rogers said evasively.

“No, you’re not. You just don’t want to sound like an idiot repeating them,” she said, retrieving the bottle. “Just be grateful it’s not pulque.”

Stark’s expression shifted quickly to alarm, and he scrambled away from her. “You’ve got your power back!”

“I didn’t do it. I am, in fact, the victim here.”

“Of a hummingbird,” Rogers reminded her. “Don’t be so melodramatic.”

“Says the guy who wanted to break out the first aid kit,” she countered.

“At no point did I suggest that.”

“You really wanted to, though.”

“Guys? You maybe want to go back to the beginning on this one? And please keep in mind that you haven’t been out here for more than half an hour, so I shouldn’t have to ask that,” Stark asked plaintively.

“Jones got bitten by a hummingbird. The hummingbird then turned the rum into tequila and flew away.”

“Wow. I think that was the least helpful explanation I’ve ever gotten, Steve. You might have an award coming over that one. It even tops Hammer’s breakdown of how giving Vanko control of a fleet of armed drones stationed at a science expo full of civilians came to look like a great idea instead of treason and/or terrorism. Which, I’d like to add, takes some doing, because _that_ was a doozy.”

“You done pouting about being out of the loop?” she asked.

“I’m not pouting, and no, I’m not done.”

“Okay. Let me know when you are.” Lucy ate her pancakes in silence for a minute before he caved.

“Fine, all right, I’m done pouting. Now what the hell happened up here?”

“I ran into Huītzilopōchtli while I was trying to dig your royal deadweight out of the underworld. Malīnalxōchitl was very interested in keeping him there. Huītzilopōchtli wanted him gone, or maybe just to annoy his sister, so he did me a solid. Then he showed up here, stabbed me in the fucking arm with his goddamn beak, and turned the rum into tequila.”

Stark stared at her for a second, then turned back to Rogers. “Am I having a stroke, or did she just make even less sense than you?”

“I don’t know what you want, Tony. What happened is what happened. Kind of.” Rogers frowned. “You didn’t mention the second one before.”

“She’s not up here fucking with my booze.”

“Why?” Stark asked.

“Why what?” Lucy countered evenly.

“Why _any of that_?” he shouted, throwing his hands in the air.

“Dunno. Weird theological reasons? I mean, Huītzilopōchtli helped me out last night because he was trying to trip up his sister, but I don’t know what the hell she was doing, or why he felt the need to mess with me now.”

“Talking to you is like having an aneurysm, I swear to god,” Stark groaned.

“You don’t have to.” She spread blackberry jam on half a pancake and settled back to read le Fay’s file again. “I mean, we wouldn’t be having any conversation at all if you hadn’t stolen my ring, would we? I don’t feel the least bit sorry for you. You just show up out of the blue and fuck everything up, because you’re Tony Stark.”

“I think that’s an oversimplification of my heroic motivations--”

“Nope.”

“Are you not going to back me up here at all? Has she really got you that cowed after twenty minutes?” Stark pleaded with Rogers. He turned back to Lucy. “I brought you pancakes and everything.”

“You’re an errand boy, sent by an arrow-using assassin, to deliver a message.”

“We’re going there? Seriously? Straight to _Apocalypse Now_?”

“Yup.”

He ran his fingers through his hair. “Fine. I’m going back to sit in the air conditioning and watch the news. It’s very boring, because you’re not out there, shooting people. Because you got caught by a normal human being and a guy who can’t work a can-opener.”

“Wow. That stings. I’m barely holding it together here. I may sob hysterically into my breakfast as soon as I think you’re out of earshot,” Lucy said flatly. Tony started to stalk off, then turned around and stalked right back. Rogers sighed and rubbed his eyes. She could practically see his hair graying right before her eyes. She wondered which of them was going to break down and murder the other one first.

“Why do you even care about le Fay? It’s not like you were buds before I took your power away.”

“Morgan le Fay is somehow responsible for Jones turning the southeast into a shooting gallery,” Rogers said.

“Wait, how does _that_ work?” Stark asked, frowning.

“None of your business.”

Lucy didn’t even bother looking up when Rogers jumped in with, “She’s, um, intimately connected to Doom.”

“How does Doom having a hot girlfriend who’s not secretly a robot result in everybody you’ve ever looked at funny getting their heads blown off at second-string tourist attractions?” Stark paused. “Wait, we’re sure she’s not secretly a robot, right? No, never mind. She can’t be a robot. Robots can’t use magic.”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “Your absolutely stunning logical detour aside, she was handing out magic constructs like candy. Presumably at Doom’s behest. I don’t think the intention was really for me to win.”

“And what, she got bored and stopped?”

“Don’t be stupid. Of course she didn’t.” Lucy shrugged. “I figured out what she was up to and fixed her little red wagon. And now,” she waved the file at him, “I have the beginnings of an answer to why she started it in the first place.”

“You fixed her little red wagon? Who says that?” Stark laughed.

“Fuck you. And I do, obviously.”

“I don’t see why you needed a file to figure out why she doesn’t like you. I mean, I wouldn’t like you either if you shrank Kang the Conqueror’s time-legions down to the size of oompa loompas and then told Kang you were me after he got all ‘Who dares!’ about it.”

“First off, you don’t like me, and I never did that to you. Secondly, I told Kang I was the Hood, not le Fay.”

“How did you manage to go up against a magician without powers?” Rogers asked quietly.

“Oh for fuck’s sake. If _one more person_ assumes that me not having that stupid ring means I’m a talking chimp who’s been sleepwalking through the past fifteen years, I’m going to lose my goddamned mind.” Lucy pushed the empty carton away angrily and lit a cigarette, snapping the lighter closed with unnecessary force. “I mean, seriously. He,” she pointed at Stark, “can build a flying fucking flamethrower that doubles as fancy dress out of three goddamned paperclips and a wad of chewing gum in a fucking cave in a fucking third world shithole, and nobody blinks. I spend literally _half my fucking life_ working with magic, and everybody just cannot fucking _believe_ it when I manage to tie my own shoes without a power source. Like, they’re ready to roll out a slow clap for me when I figure out how to load a gun on my own.” Rogers was leaning away from her, his expression reminiscent of a deer in headlights.

“You know what that dog-faced motherfucker on the beach would be doing if he had that ring?” she demanded, jabbing at Stark with her forefinger. “ _Sucking harder_. He’d be like a super-charged electrolux. You’d be able to hear the sound of him failing at life and levitating things straight up his nose from Australia. There are three big things separating incompetent whoresons like that and great magicians. One of them is style, and another one is knowing what the fuck you’re doing, and I’ve still got both. The only thing I’m missing is the juice. I mean, I lost my phone, too. I guess that must mean I’ll never be able to fucking call anybody ever again, right? _Assholes_. I--”

“Not to rain on your epic rant,” Stark cut in, “but I feel compelled to set the record straight and reiterate that I made a flamethrower that doubles as fancy dress out of a huge pile of other weapons, not three paperclips and a wad of chewing gum. Don’t get me wrong--I could have if that’s all I’d had. But my accomplishment does actually obey the known laws of physics. Oh, and if style counts? Why are you dressed like Militia Barbie?”

“Because the Taskmaster hasn’t got any style whatsoever and is grossly envious of those who do.” Lucy snatched the bottle and drank deeply. “I am too fucking sober for this bullshit.”

“Seriously, though, how’d you bust up Morgan’s little hootenanny with no magic?”

“You know how in the old stories, iron puts the kibosh on faerie magic?”

They both nodded. Stark was smirking again.

“So you threw a handful of nails at her and ran off?”

“Don’t be a jackass. The iron thing is bullshit, unless you’re talking about the same shape and application of iron that’s going to put the kibosh on _breathing_ , generally and across the board. That sort of iron works fine in pretty much any situation. But you can achieve the same results that iron is _supposed_ to yield by the judicious use of an isochronous cyclotron and sodium caseinate.”

“When did you figure out how to use a cyclotron?” Stark demanded. She gave him a withering look.

“They do come with instruction manuals, Stark,” she snapped.

“Where did you get sodium caseinate from?” Rogers ventured. They both stared at him.

“It’s one of the primary components of non-dairy creamer,” Lucy informed him. “One of the abominations of the modern age. Congratulations on having avoided it so far. Come to think of it, I should probably write Frau Doktor Nein a thank-you note for that one.”

“Where do I know that name from?” he muttered. 

Stark frowned. “I recognize it, too.”

“ _You_ probably remember it from the Big One,” Lucy said to Rogers. “She was one of the big-shot Nazi super-scientists. Unlike your pal Schmidt, she was actually loyal to der Führer. She managed to evade Allied forces after the war and continue her nefarious career. I personally wouldn’t consider lowering the standards of office workers’ daily lives by a barely detectable amount much of an accomplishment, but I guess everybody has their petty failures.” She shrugged.

“ _You_ ,” she poked at Stark again, “probably remember her from when she sued Ian Fleming and that director dude over _Dr. No_ on likeness rights and defamation grounds.”

“Oh, yeah.” He thought for a moment, rubbing his chin. “She’s the one who gave the Jurors their powers, isn’t she?”

“Well, not deliberately. She zapped the shit out of them when they found in favor of the defendants,” Lucy said, shrugging. “I’m pretty sure she was trying to kill them. I mean, she screamed ‘Roast in hell, Hausschweine!’ before she shot them and everything. In her defense, though, ‘she’s a fucking Nazi’ isn’t acceptable legal grounds for finding against a plaintiff in an intellectual property case. I think you’re supposed to find for them, award them damages of one penny, and then arrest them for being a fucking Nazi, if that’s how you’re going to roll.”

“Hard to win a defamation suit when you’re literally a Nazi, though,” Stark said. “I just wish they’d put their powers to better use than issuing dodgy non-binding arbitrations on behalf of non-consenting parties.” He looked at Rogers. “Did I ever tell you about the time they crashed a Stark Industries union negotiation? It was unbelievable. We filed for a restraining order, which they then declared improperly issued. Pepper had to bureaucracy them into submission.” He chewed his lip. “I wonder why she never sued Mike Myers over the Austin Powers stuff.”

“Well, they’d’ve probably sat the Jurors again, so why bother? And it’s pretty clearly parody, which I’d think puts it firmly in the bounds of fair use.” Lucy shrugged. “Not to mention that Dr. Evil is a send-up of Blofeld, not Dr. No, and Farbissina has nothing in common with Nein aside from nationality. Then again, at this point, she’d probably just send her Kriegsaffen after anybody she was really mad at. I get the feeling she’s done with the judicial system for a while, and honestly, what’s the point of even _having_ Kriegsaffen if you’re not going to sic them on people at least once in a while?”

“Kriegs...?” Rogers pursed his lips. “War-apes? Am I translating that right? Tony, why are we letting Nazi doctors have weaponized gorillas?”

“I think they’re actually orangutans. Gorillas are a little hard to come by these days, whereas orangs are being pushed out of their habitat like whoa.”

“I don’t care if they’re _lemurs_ , that just seems like a bad call,” Rogers said irritably.

“Hey, now. Take it up with Fury,” Stark said soothingly, holding his hands up. “I wasn’t even invited to the meeting where fascists with tactical primates got de-prioritized.”

“Don’t look at me. I’m firmly of the opinion that _everything_ is better with monkeys. Maybe not with lemurs, though, because they’re just sit around all day getting high off millipedes, if you let them. Which is, yes, adorable, but not particularly helpful in any productive scheme. Then again, I guess if you--”

“Please stop coming up with a productive scheme involving soused lemurs,” Rogers sighed.

“Never. Especially since then I’d have an excuse to let a bunch of lemurs get stoned.”

“No.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever seen a lemur stoned.” She grinned. “They get _so high_. It’s incredible. If humans were capable of getting that high, we’d never have made it out of the stone age.”

“Your priorities are deeply misplaced, Jones,” Rogers said, shaking his head.

“My priorities are fucking awesome, you just--”

Rogers held up a hand suddenly, his head tilting and his other hand going to his earpiece. Lucy scoffed and went back to the tequila, only to find him taking it away from her.

“What the fuck, Rogers?”

“Thor’s awake.”

“Great. Great news. He’ll be on his feet in no time. What does that have to do with you taking my tequila away?”

“He wants to see you immediately.” Rogers and Stark traded a look, and she crossed her arms.

“What if I don’t want to see him?”

“Not an argument Coulson’s interested in entertaining right now,” Rogers told her.

“Well, then, what does that even fucking mean, he wants to see me _immediately_? Do I need to brace for a magic hammer to the face? Because I’m really not down with that right now. I’m pretty sure even under completely normal circumstances, I wouldn’t be able to squeegee my brains off a wall and put them back in without some pretty significant impairment afterwards.”

“Does he have a _reason_ to want to hit you with Mjolnir, Jones?” Stark asked as they gathered the trash and herded her back into the hangar.

“No idea, but I also don’t know why he’d want to see me, either. Usually somebody you don’t know tries to pull you out of the underworld, you’re all yeah thanks, how wonderful, now get the fuck away from me, I never want to see your face again.” She dumped the carton and her empty water bottles into a bin. “Did he say anything else?”

“He’s upset, and Coulson wants us to hurry, so march.”

“Stop trying to herd me, Captain. I’m not a stray sheep.”

“He’d make a great border collie, though,” Stark offered. Rogers glared at him.

“Back into the belly of the beast,” Lucy muttered, tension corkscrewing up her spine. If she wound up collapsing a level on everybody over this, she was going to feel terrible about it afterwards. Probably.

“Robots _can’t_ use magic, though, right?” Stark asked as the elevator began its descent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huītzilopōchtli (Hummingbird) and Malīnalxōchitl (Grassflower) are borrowed from Aztec mythology.


	13. Chapter 13

Thor groped toward consciousness, listening for Loki’s voice. He was cold, colder than he remembered being even when they had gone to Jotunheim, as cold as he had felt when those _things_ had touched him and whispered in his ear. He shivered violently. They had dug into the darkest shadows of his heart and judged him based on what they found there. Their hissed accusations--fratricide, war-monger, unworthy, unfit for the throne, braggart, drunkard--had filled his mind until Loki had blotted them out and driven them off. Loki had come for him. Loki had forgiven him. Loki had saved him. He groaned. Loki had lied to him. Loki had remained behind, a small figure receding against the empty sky once more.

“Thor? Thor! Wake up. Please, wake up.”

Sif’s voice. He struggled to open his eyes, then squinted against the bright light. Someone shaded his eyes almost instantly, and he relaxed slightly. Sif and Volstagg were crowded around him, smiling broadly. Hogun was at the foot of the bed, grinning like a madman. Half his teammates hovered behind them, relieved and happy. Loki was not among them. He swallowed painfully and tried to speak, tried to ask Sif where Loki was. Coulson slipped under Sif’s arm with a glass of water and put the straw to his lips. He drank gratefully, then fell back against the pillow, exhausted and numb.

“Loki?” he asked quietly, surprised at the gravelly sound of his own voice.

Sif’s brows furrowed. “What of Loki, Thor?”

“He...she...did not come with me, then?” he sighed, closing his eyes again. He should have expected it. He’d extracted an oath, yes, but then Loki had chosen to swear on his blood. Loki might as well have laughed in his face. Still, he had saved him, had he not?

“I don’t know what you mean, Thor,” she said urgently, leaning close and taking one of his hands in hers. “You saw Loki?”

“She freed me and brought me back,” he explained weakly. “I made her promise to come with me, but now....She isn’t here, is she?”

Sif shot a glance at Phil, who cleared his throat. “You mean Lucy Jones? She’s here.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You set your mage on him without consulting us?”

“We asked our mage to save him, yes,” he said smoothly.

“Sif, please. You must trust him. He is an honorable man,” Thor managed. “Son of Coul, please, ask her to come. I need to speak with her.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Thor,” Phil cautioned. “She’s as much of a disaster as she’s always been. Losing the ring hasn’t altered her personality at all.”

Thor’s eyes blazed. “I have not mourned my brother for two years only to find him again and then be denied his presence.”

Coulson’s expression grew fixed, a half-smile that didn’t fit the situation or his face, and he nodded before touching his comm.

“Rogers? Please escort Jones back into the base. She’s needed in Thor’s room.” He gave a brisk nod to the now-stiff gathering and excused himself from the room. The door closed behind him, and he continued speaking into the comm. Thor blushed.

“I apologize, my friends. I was unfairly short-tempered,” he rumbled softly. He registered the absence of another face. “Sif, Hogun? Where is Fandral? Not--?”

“He is fine. We sent him back to Asgard for a healer,” Sif said quickly. “He should return soon.”

“Amora attacked you and stole the ring. You’ve been asleep for almost four days,” Hogun explained. Bruce and Hank nodded behind him.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” Hank added.

“Loki said that she had struck me down. I do not think luck was part of my return,” he groaned. He could still feel Loki’s shape in his arms, still too thin by half, still shying away from affection, but solid and real and banishing the cold. It was like the phantom pain of a lost limb. “Loki saved me.”

Sif squeezed his hand and bent low. “Be careful, Thor. Have you forgotten how you parted?”

“How could I?” he laughed bitterly. “It has been in my dreams often enough, especially as of late. Loki was unhinged by grief, Sif. If I had but been there, if I hadn’t been banished for my arrogance, would any of it have happened? He has had time to come back to himself since he fell. I can at least hope that he’s done so, can’t I?”

“We all hope,” she sighed. “All I ask is that you do it with open eyes.”

He nodded, and she offered him more water. He was surprised at how quickly he had tired from so little effort. His blood felt like ice in his veins. He caught the worried glances his companions exchanged. A pair of querulous voices reached them from the corridor, and Sif looked up sharply. Thor rubbed the grit from his eyes and listened. Tony was arguing with a woman about something. He recognized Steve’s footsteps.

“I’m just saying, I find it hard to believe that every amphibian on the planet is secretly a monster,” Tony said, his voice muffled by the door.

“If belief had anything to do with it, we’d be living in a very different world,” the woman retorted. She sounded like Jones, but the timbre and pitch of her voice were subtly off in a way that Tony’s weren’t. He couldn’t make out the hushed words between them and Phil, but they were all inside a moment later.

The short, stout blonde accompanying them eyed him critically. He tilted his head. Loki’s eyes were in a stranger’s face.

“Lucy Jones,” she said finally, extending a hand. “We met briefly in the underworld. Congratulations on appearing to be perfectly fine, all things considered.”

He took her hand and gasped as warmth flowed through him. It was as if he’d come out of a cold rain to sit in front of the hearthfire. Lucy and Sif stared at him, and Hogun’s eyes narrowed. Lucy tugged back gently against his grip.

“Gonna need that back eventually, your highness,” she told him.

“Please, stay. Sit.” He couldn’t bring himself to let go.

“You look different than you did when we saw you in New York,” Sif observed, directing a pointed look at him.

“Yeah, it’s amazing what getting your magic stolen will do for your looks,” Lucy said, glancing at Phil. He shrugged and nodded toward a chair next to Thor’s bed. She sat hesitantly, pulled at his hand again, then seemed to give up. “What did you need to see me for, exactly?”

“I needed to be sure that you were safe,” Thor managed after a long pause. He swallowed heavily and squeezed her hand. “I needed you here. It’s been so long, Loki.”

“Lucy,” she corrected absently, a questioning look going back to Phil. “Unless you have a speech impediment, in which case, I apologize for being an insensitive dick.” She cleared her throat. “Uh, clearly, as you can see, I’m safe, and it’s actually only been like a couple hours since you last saw me, so why don’t I just get going and let you get some rest?”

“Thor,” Sif prompted, her voice pitched low and urgent. Lucy looked from him to her and back again.

He nodded. She was right. “Do you remember what you said when you first found me?”

“You mean death from above? Yeah, why?” Her brow furrowed, then cleared. “Oh. Yeah, sure, ask away. I wouldn’t trust me, either.”

“And after?”

She colored slightly. “Yes, _that_. I feel like I should point out that the underworld is a place where the personal facets of archetypes hold a _great_ deal of power and shouldn’t be discarded without good cause. So, in that light, uh, hitting something with a broom and yelling ‘No snakes in the house!’ is a perfectly legitimate thing to do.”

“Magic is _weird_ ,” Tony said finally, breaking the silence.

“Oh, and string theory makes perfect sense,” Lucy shot back, scowling at him. Hank looked like he might argue the point until Tony elbowed him.

Thor nodded to Sif, and she and Volstagg relaxed slightly. Hogun’s dark eyes rested on Lucy’s face, his lips pressed into a thin line.

“I did not believe that you had returned as you promised,” Thor said after a moment.

“No offense to the underworld and its many terrifying denizens, but it’s not exactly a place I hang out in for kicks,” Lucy said. “I just needed to be sure the rift that Amora caused when she knocked a hole in reality with you as a projectile closed up properly. You really didn’t have to worry about it. I mean, it’s nice of you to worry about it, I guess, but it’s not necessary.” She puffed out her cheeks and looked around the room. “So long as we’re all here in one place, though, I guess now would be the right time to ask if anybody knows why Amora stole my ring?”

“She thought it contained your soul,” Sif explained. “She took it to strike back at Thor.”

Lucy tilted her head. “I....That....She...? Wow.”

“That’s my reaction to _everything you say_ ,” Tony groused.

“It’s not my fault you’re fundamentally incapable of keeping up,” she snapped. “Okay, _why_ did she think it contains my soul?”

“We may have given her that impression,” Hank mumbled.

Lucy stared at him.

“It was a working hypothesis at the time,” he explained. She stared at him for another few seconds before pushing her hair back from her face and heaving an exaggerated sigh.

“Okay, you guys do understand that Harry Potter isn’t actually _real_ , right?” she demanded. “It’s not some meticulously researched look at magic. You can’t dig out somebody’s soul like a rutabaga, dice it up, and hide it in jewelry and notebooks and ‘58 Plymouths. Not to mention that even if you could, you’d have to be crazy as a shithouse rat to actually go through with it. I mean, one moment of carelessness on a trip to the beach, and you wind up spending the rest of your life hanging out there with a metal detector and a sand-sifter.”

“I’m almost disappointed that you can’t possess a ‘58 Plymouth,” Tony snorted.

“Yeah, me too. Screw running over punk teenager vandals, I’d spend the rest of eternity double-parking and tooling around ten miles under the speed limit with my blinker on.” Lucy shook her head. “That doesn’t explain why she thought stealing it would upset you, though. You don’t even know me. Wouldn’t kidnapping one of your merry men here be a more effective tactic? Or even, you know, one of your annoying but human and completely magic-free co-Avengers?”

“I’m afraid that I revealed your identity before we realized that Amora would betray us,” Thor confessed. Lucy looked at him blankly.

“Amora knows who you are, Loki,” Volstagg supplied. Lucy glanced from one of them to the other, confusion written on her face, before finally looking at Coulson.

“Okay, can you translate whatever the hell they’re trying to say? Obviously, my schedule’s wide open right now, but I don’t think spending the rest of the afternoon on this extraterrestrial who’s on first routine is going to be productive.”

“Loki is the second-born prince of Asgard,” Phil explained. “There was a struggle for the throne, he fell from the Bifrost during the fight, and here you are.”

“And the Bifrost is...?”

“The rainbow bridge,” Sif said.

“Not helping. Coulson?”

“Interdimensional portal.”

She narrowed her eyes, started to say something, stopped, and then turned to Thor. “You think I’m your missing brother, last seen falling into...a rift between worlds.” He nodded. “And your psycho ex-friend of an alien sorceress, who now has my ring, also thinks this.” He nodded glumly. “Okay, give me my damn hand back right now.”

She snatched her hand from his grasp, and he felt the cold steal back over him. It was not as sharp as before, but it was all he could do not to reach for her again, to pull her back as she edged away from him. She rubbed her temples. “Do I even want to know _why_ you think I’m your missing brother?”

“The similarities are startling,” he managed. She looked pointedly down at her chest, then back at him, her lips pursing. He knew the look in her eyes, the set of her mouth, the tension in her jaw. Oh, how he knew that sharp, angry, hard face. He could practically hear Loki hissing “You _idiot_ ” in his ear.

“You deny it, then?” Hogun asked.

“Seriously?” Lucy’s left eye twitched slightly. “I have at no point in the last thirty years seen or experienced anything that would lead me to think I’m a dude, an alien, a god, or any combination thereof. So yeah, I’m going to have to go with denying it.”

“Well, at least that’s settled,” Phil said brightly. 

Everyone turned to look at him, and he smiled the same beatific smile Thor had come to associate with stratagems he’d need explained to him later by a native Midgardian. He risked a quick sideways check on Lucy and found her already glaring murderously at the man. It only encouraged him, and the smile grew bigger.

“Jones, I do apologize that the actions of SHIELD have inadvertently placed you in serious jeopardy.” Thor would swear Phil was being perfectly sincere if he’d known him just a bit less well. “The least we can do is keep you in protective custody until Amora has been dealt with. Since we’re already taking measures to defend Thor against a repeat attack, and since you’re in a position to assist monitoring his recovery, it would be most effective for you to stay here for the time being. I’ll have a cot brought in immediately.”

“Prick,” she growled.

“You’re welcome. If it’s any consolation, SHIELD thanks you--”

“If you say ‘for your cooperation,’ I swear to god, you will rue the day,” she warned him. The shadow of a real smile played at the edges of his lips. “I’m serious. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday, you will _rue_ it.”

“Didn’t you already do a ‘rue the day’ speech on somebody? Are you recycling your material already?” Tony asked.

“I’m taking a mulligan on that one. The news crews all cut out the best part.”

“Do we get any say in this?” Sif interrupted, crossing her arms and glowering at Phil.

“An excellent point,” Lucy agreed quickly. “Don’t they get a say in this?”

“Thor?” Phil asked.

“Wait, shouldn’t you guys take a vote or something?” Lucy suggested.

“Monarchy,” Phil reminded her.

“Nuts.” She slumped back in the chair.

Thor glanced at each of his companions in turn. Sif wouldn’t meet his eyes, already knowing his decision. Her disapproval stung, but it was unavoidable. Hogun shrugged almost imperceptibly, and Volstagg was shaking his head and eyeing Jones as if she were a particularly dangerous snake. He turned to Lucy.

“As much as it might displease you now, it would be for the best. Amora has proven herself a dangerous foe, and she believes you to be my brother. If she returns, you will be in need of the protection. And...I would be most grateful for your company.”

Lucy snorted.

“Looks like it’s settled, then.” Phil smiled brightly.

“If she’s going to stay here, she needs to bathe,” Sif said firmly. “She smells like a burnt troll.”

“Unless trolls are made of tobacco and cheap incense, I don’t think that’s an accurate statement,” Lucy snapped. “And it’s not going to do much good, because I don’t have a change of clothes.”

“We can get you a change of clothes,” Phil said. “Come on.”

*****

“You are unbe _fucking_ lievable, you know that?” Lucy hissed. Coulson didn’t bother looking back, but the two agents flanking her fell back a half-pace and adjusted their stance. Good. She didn’t feel like being fucking crowded right now. She felt like ripping something to shreds and then setting it on fire. Thor thought she was his dead _brother_? Fucking Mimir. Mother _fucking_ Mimir. She was going to turn him into a football and sneak him into the supply closet of an underfunded peewee league somewhere it rained every weekend. And she’d wondered why the prince was acting weird when she’d come for him. Fuck fuck _fuck_. The light-headed sensation she’d had earlier was gone, replaced by a feverish certainty that none of this could possibly be fucking happening.

“I’m sorry if I’ve interrupted your plans to slip custody and go back on the run the second you’re transferred out of this facility, but you’re just going to have to deal with it for the time being. Thor’s a nice guy. I don’t think this is going to be as much of a hardship as you’re making out.”

“I don’t think you’re the least bit sorry at all.” She made a conscious effort to stop flexing her fingers. It was a tell she didn’t need to be broadcasting. “And Thor might very well be the third coming of Jesus, but he comes with a side-order of trigger-happy honor guard, and they don’t like me on general principle.”

“Well, I’m sure if they got to know you, they’d find something specific to dislike,” he offered. “Fortunately, it looks like they’ll have that opportunity.”

“Hooray,” she said flatly. “I don’t suppose you can shed any light on why exactly they think I’m...not me?”

“General appearance, deportment, and magic use.”

“That’s it?” Lucy frowned. “I’m beginning to see how Pym keeps churning out super-science monstrosities that want to bang his girlfriend. You people’s standards are just _lax_. Shouldn’t be hard to talk him out of it, though.”

“Feel free to try.”

She had to do more than try. Lucy found herself rolling her fingers again and finally just gave up and jammed her hands in her pockets. It had been one thing to flirt with the idea of a sibling from a distance, with the advantage of unilateral knowledge. There were no obligations, no expectations. The ball had been in her court. It hadn’t seemed quite real, somehow. It had been an occasional daydream, like what might have been if her parents hadn’t died, or her aunt had been a normal person instead of an incipient Jim Jones, or she’d ever developed the common sense of a ground squirrel. She’d been able to walk away or not without consequence, as it suited her. _This_ was a living, breathing person saying he needed her and practically begging her to stay and giving her a look that somehow got right under her skin, and now she felt like she was choking on something she’d never be able to swallow and couldn’t bring herself to spit out. It was not a tenable situation. Coulson stopped in front of a large supply closet and opened it.

“Help yourself.”

She glared at him. 

“I’m looking into the abyss,” she grunted. “And you know what’s looking back? _Zebra-stripe hospital scrubs_.”

“Just find something in your size.”

“I’m going to need shoes at some point, too. I mean, aside from the fact that I’m starting to feel like a damn hobbit, I really don’t want to get stuck reenacting _Die Hard_ if Amora does show back up.” Lucy rooted savagely through the stacks of standard-issue scrubs and sweats. She finally found a pair of gray sweatpants and a gray t-shirt with SHIELD stamped on it in large black letters that would fit her without obvious modification.

“Fine.” Coulson took the clothes from her and tucked them under his arm. “You can use the shower attached to Thor’s suite.”

“You know, you should be helping me convince him that I’m not his damn brother. What if I turn him to the dark side?” she asked, following him back the way they’d come. The facility had more in common with an ant nest than she’d have thought was strictly good planning. Then again, Pym might have had a hand in it.

“Who says I’m not helping convince him?”

“You’re impossible,” she gritted.

Coulson sighed. “You’re not his brother, are you?”

“Of course I’m not,” she snarled.

“Not even a little bit?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “You’re positive?”

“For fuck’s sake, yes, I’m positive that I’m not really _a guy_ from _another dimension_.”

“There we go, then. I’m sure Thor will catch on once he’s gotten a chance to know you,” he said soothingly.

“And in the meantime?”

“Just keep being yourself.”

“I thought you were down on me making plans to cut and run?” she asked sourly.

“Just keep being yourself _within reason_.”

“Your advice is terrible, and I don’t like you.”

“Let me know when you’re ready to stop sulking and act like an adult,” Coulson replied cheerfully.

“You’ll be dead of old age before I’m ready to do either,” Lucy muttered. She needed a shower. She needed a nap--genuine sleep, not the false sleep of an unoccupied shell. She needed everybody to get off her tits for two seconds. She needed every goddamned thing they had on Amora.

She was relieved to see that everyone except the Asgardians had cleared out by the time they got back. She snatched the clean clothes from Coulson, stalked into the bathroom, and shut the door firmly on that infuriating _look_ Thor kept giving her. She dug her lighter and the knuckleduster out of her pockets and the sheet of paper out of her bra and stuffed them into the pockets of the sweatpants, then stripped down and turned the water as hot as she could stand it. She didn’t doubt that she smelled as bad as Sif had complained. Between the Negasynod’s censers, the absolutely vicious blunts the secret president had been chain-smoking, her cigarettes, and two days’ worth of sweat, she wouldn’t be surprised if they just threw her old clothes straight into the incinerator.

Her shoulders started to relax under the spray, and she took a deep breath. She could leave, but they’d be sitting ducks if Amora turned up before the cavalry did. It would be more effective for her to stay here until one or the other happened; Coulson had been at least right on that score. Thor had a supernova’s worth of power wrapped up inside him, but he either no clue how to use it properly or Amora knew his techniques well enough to get around him. Her money was on the former.

The rest of them put together had about as much magic as a smartphone, and if Amora was even halfway worthy of her title, they’d be fucked if it came to a proper fight. Not that she really cared. She didn’t. She really didn’t. The golden god and his handful of stranded friends were not her fucking problem. But the mere thought of having gone to all that trouble for nothing was enough to make her want to dig her fingers into someone’s throat and choke the life out of them. She hadn’t swapped Malīnalxōchitl’s promises of power and wisdom and _her fucking parents_ for a stranger’s life and several decades of having to check her shoes before putting them on only to have some extraplanetary asshole pop up less than a week later and snuff him, had she? No, she had not. If she was going to piss off gods in the process of saving people, they were goddamned well going to _stay_ saved. At least until such time as they annoyed her badly enough that she was ready to kill them herself, anyway.

Lucy scrubbed herself off and considered the base itself. If Amora were an earth magician, and she hadn’t just been through the wringer, hardening it against aetheric intrusion would be simple enough. As it was, there was a better than average chance she’d either melt everything to slag around them or do something completely stupid and inconsequential, like block data traffic or radio signals. And Amora’s magic was foreign enough that she had no real idea what countermeasures were likely to be effective. Maybe Coulson had something fun tucked away in the arsenal. She had to assume there was something lying around that was more powerful than the tasers and bean-bag rounds everyone had been carrying below ground. Just because it was a Bad Idea to open up on full-auto with real bullets inside a concrete bunker full of your own people didn’t mean it was always avoidable. They had to have _someone_ running around who was kitted out to deal with a frontal assault instead of an unruly prisoner or a disoriented super-patient. It was SHIELD. They had M60s mounted on their golf carts, for fuck’s sake.

She rinsed off and killed the water. _How long could it possibly take their off-planet back-up to get here?_ she thought. A few more days, maybe? It had already been at least three. So she probably had another few days at most to sit around and convince him that she wasn’t Loki. She toweled off and got dressed. 

Shouldn’t be hard, she thought. She generally had his teammates tearing their hair out after half an hour. And, in spite of what she’d told Stark less than an hour ago, sometimes belief had everything to do with how the world was shaped. Whatever they really were to each other--nothing, former siblings, a mean-spirited cosmic joke--belief was the difference between going their own way again and getting sucked into some repetitive stupidity where they got under each other’s feet until something terrible happened. As morbidly humorous as the idea of having a huge alien prince with a magic hammer showing up to yell at her about giving up on crime every time she tried to do anything might be, it would eventually get old and turn ugly. 

Lucy wiped the condensation off the mirror and checked herself over. People had definitely looked worse after getting shanghaied by SHIELD assassins, but she did miss just being able to clean herself up and deck herself out with a snap of her fingers without anybody commenting on it. It wasn’t that she was terrifically vain, but, as she’d told Stark, style did count. 

She went to fold her dirty clothes and almost gagged. She could get high just off the smell of pot clinging to them. She had no idea how the secret president could even see straight at any given time, never mind drive a cut-throat bargain and back the Anti-Pope up against a metaphorical wall. Lucy opened the door slowly in a successful attempt to avoid being stabbed with a spear. Thor was asleep again, and Sif was glowering at her from his bedside. The other two were guarding the door from the outside.

“Better?” she asked archly.

“If you make another attempt on his life, on my honor, I will end you,” Sif replied.

“Well, then. Glad we could clear that up.” _This is gonna be a fun few days_. “Coulson, I’m going to take a nap, and then I’m going to need to see everything you guys have on Amora.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I’m too tired to go through the same argument twice. Just go ask Stark and Rogers to give you a run-down of what I was ranting about earlier.” She looked around for the cot she’d been promised. It was right next to Thor’s bed. “Seriously? Fuck that. I don’t even sleep that close to people I’m banging.”

“Given your taste in partners, probably a wise decision,” Coulson observed. “Thor needs a guard, and everyone needs to keep an eye on you. Two birds with one stone.”

Fatigue was beginning to settle into her bones. “Fine. And you can go to hell over the girlfriend crack. Below the belt, Coulson.”

“It wasn’t a joke.” A grimace flitted across his face, fast as a shadow. “Get some rest, and try not to annoy Sif. She’s not kidding, either.”

Lucy grumbled something she was relatively sure didn’t make sense and flopped onto the cot. She was asleep almost as soon as she’d curled into the pillow.


	14. Chapter 14

Lucy scribbled furiously in a notebook Rogers had supplied, trying to ignore Thor’s hand on her shoulder. She’d spent an hour swatting him away every time he reached for her in his sleep before giving up and pretending not to notice. It was not, at least, nearly as alarming as waking up to find his hand tangled in her hair had been. She’d had flashbacks to the crown of scorpions before she’d quite realized what was going on. He seemed to sleep much more soundly when he was touching her, which she had found odd until she’d taken a closer look at what his energy was doing. By whatever godforsaken mechanism, being in physical contact with her was helping him regulate the power coursing through him. She wasn’t sure whether Sif was more irritated by her pushing him away or her letting him be. She shifted position, letting one foot dangle over the edge of the cot and tucking the other behind her knee.

“I suppose this is kind of a stupid question at this juncture, but is Amora actually from Asgard?” Lucy asked without looking up from her calculations.

“You know very well she was born in Odin’s halls,” Sif growled back.

“Okay, let me rephrase that,” Lucy replied with studied calm. “Is Amora actually _an Asgardian_?”

“Why are you asking?” Romanoff broke in, trying to forestall another one-sided argument.

“If this file and those recordings are accurate, she’s all over the map. There’s no coherence to her technique.”

“She has had many teachers in her life,” Sif said. “You, for starters.”

“The only thing I’ve ever taught anyone is why you don’t pick magic-fights with me without some kind of reason,” Lucy replied evenly. “Oh, and how to blow off people who are all ‘You need to save the world!’. And how to set the clock on a microwave.” She frowned. “Why the hell that one keeps coming up, I don’t know. Like, it cooks your food in sixty seconds, why do you also expect it to tell you what time it is?”

“So you’re useless,” Sif remarked.

“As a screen door on a submarine,” Lucy agreed happily. She’d been wrong. Sif was more irritated by her refusing to take the bait. She’d been trying to pick a fight almost since Lucy had woken up. “Maybe you should have saved that robot you smashed the shit out of in New Mexico. I heard it did pretty well until his highness here got his hammer back. If you still had it, it could at least run interference while you guys evacuated in the event of an attack. Assuming it could be controlled and wasn’t just on a rampage, anyway.”

“The Destroyer?” Sif demanded, her face going white with anger.

“I guess? I didn’t really look into it that much. Everybody else was all excited about a walking doomsday device that shoots fire out of its face, but, I mean, come on. My specialty is fire. What the hell do I need more fire for? Now, maybe if it was a two-story automated fire- _extinguisher_ , I’d be interested. It would make summer barbecues a lot safer, for one thing.”

“If your speciality is fire, why do you never use it?” Romanoff asked, tilting her head.

“I use it. Just not that often. Unlike some people here, I’m not a professional murderer, and setting people on fire tends to, you know, kill them. Messily.”

“You only kill people when you’re not getting paid for it?” Romanoff snorted.

“I’ve never done wetwork, I have no plans to ever do wetwork, and I’m sure I have no idea what you’re referring to.” Lucy smiled.

“I was in the same room,” Romanoff reminded her.

“And I’m pleading ignorance and/or the fifth.” Lucy shrugged. “Anyway, you’re familiar with the axiom ‘Loot, _then_ burn’? Very difficult to steal things when they’re on fire, and the resale value is _terrible_. I’m honestly not entirely sure why everyone wanted to get their hands on the fire golem from space. Like, great, you’ve managed to conquer previously-sovereign territory with it. May your glorious reign over a huge pile of ash last a thousand years.”

“How can you sit here and chatter about the killing machine you set on your own brother without batting an eyelash?” Sif hissed.

“First of all, I’m an only child. Always have been, always will be. Secondly, I was busy getting punched through a mesa in another state when all this mess with the Destroyer was going down. Nothing to do with me whatsoever. Thirdly, since when do you really _believe_ his theory that I’m Loki? I know you’ve been playing it safe and toeing the line just in case, but you haven’t given a whole lot of indication that you actually, deep down, think he’s right.”

She swallowed a quick retort and paused before replying. “When we first met, you were his very image. I’d have sworn I was looking at a ghost. And this _is_ the sort of thing Loki would do.”

“What, have two robot fights going at once? Turn himself into a lady with a full history on a different planet? Get nabbed by SHIELD? Guy sounds like a real go-getter,” Lucy said. “Did he have a reason for trying to kill Thor, or was it just Tuesday? If he did, why the hell would he wait what, a year and a half, two years, before taking another whack at it?”

“I don’t know. And, as Coulson told you, it was a struggle for succession to the throne.” Sif’s face tightened slightly.

“Oh, was Loki trying to get out of having to be king?”

“Loki tried to seize the throne. Thor is the rightful heir,” she told her. “Thor was in exile here on Midgard. He was vulnerable, and Loki took the chance to strike.”

“Here’s the thing, though,” Lucy said. She put the notebook aside and turned to face the warrior, resting her back against the wall. She tucked Thor’s hand back onto the bed, under his blanket. “Being in charge is bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. You know what you spend all your time doing? Fixing things you didn’t even fuck up. You know who gets mad at you over something? Everybody. Even if I wasn’t easily bored and frequently high, which I am, being in charge sounds like an awful fucking idea.”

“The power of the throne had no small amount of appeal to Loki. To...you.”

“The power?” Lucy scoffed. “Lady, up until Stark swiped my ring, I could do almost literally whatever I wanted. Literally. And you know what I felt zero inclination to do during any of that time? Sit in a stuffy office bossing bureaucrats and petty functionaries around, sending pissy emails about late budgetary projections, pretending to find douchebag diplomats’ stories hilarious, and getting hourly reports about why 50% of the populace thinks I’m an asshole. It’s the sort of stuff I wake up at night in a cold sweat over. Like, why not just nail yourself into a coffin and get somebody to shovel dirt on top of it already?”

“That is...not how kingship works on Asgard,” she said slowly, her eyes searching Lucy’s face.

“Oh, right, you’ve still got the old-style monarchy. Who could resist the abundance of back-stabbing, constantly-intriguing nobles? And the occasional need to personally lead hordes of dudes with swords and a tragically overdeveloped sense of honor on a killing spree on account of shit nobody really cares about, but you still might get clubbed in the face over? And the strong likelihood that when you come home you’ll have to worry about whatever dickhole is second in line and his evil laser-bot trying to blast you into kingdom come for the privilege of dealing with the same himself? I mean, throw in the inevitable natural disasters and peasant uprisings, why _wouldn’t_ anybody want to deal with that for the rest of their natural life? The only thing that might make it more appealing would be if you somehow found a way to include sectarian violence in spite of being gods. That would just be the cherry on the sundae, right there.”

Sif gaped at her, appalled.

“Look, no offense, but we’ve been around for a while. We’ve tried a _lot_ of different types of government. You know why democracy is so popular? ‘Cuz if you’re one of the poor bastards who winds up in charge, there’s a lot of you, and you only have to be faster than a few of your colleagues when the mobs show up. It’s your best bet once society gets too big to just tell people to fuck off when they go ‘So, we’ve noticed you’re good at solving problems.’”

“Jones, have you ever spent any time in an actual functioning country?” Romanoff asked archly.

“No such thing,” Lucy grunted. “All rivers flow to the sea, all gatherings of people lead to entrenched institutional issues.” She picked her notepad back up. “It is, in fact, why we can’t have nice things.”

“That’s not how it is in Asgard at all,” Sif protested.

“Everybody just feasts and sings and drinks and fucks all the time and nothing bad ever happens? Yeah, I can totally see why someone’s first inclination would be to murder their brother right in the face to be in charge of that. Seems like it would go over well with that kind of crowd.” Sif’s hands curled into fists, and she glared at Lucy. “So, tell me again why the hell you want this guy back? I mean, if fratricide and throne-stealing and general jackassery are so outrageous and foreign to Asgardian culture.”

“You’re a complete wretch,” Sif snarled. “Fates help us if you really are Loki.”

“And you’re a six-foot-tall, gold-plated buzzkill,” Lucy retorted absently, a sudden realization striking her. She penciled in a few lines. “We’re in agreement on that second part, though.”

“So power is something that holds no allure whatsoever for you?” Romanoff inquired, her eyes calculating and her tone deceptively innocent.

“Power in the raw sense of magic? Absolutely.” Lucy shrugged. “Power over people? None whatsoever. Now, if you’ll be quiet for a few seconds, I think I’m onto something.”

_You’d understand if you could see the things I’ve seen_ , she thought, sketching a few links on a fresh page. _If you’re in charge of other people, you’re responsible for them. If you’re responsible for them, it’s on you when something bad happens to them, something you could have stopped or fixed. That shit gets out of hand with a quickness when you’re dealing with magic_.

Thor sat up carefully, and she shot a venomous glare at Romanoff. “If you heard that, the Widow tricked me into saying something not-terrible right when you woke up. I’m positive that Sif will be happy to fill you in on the terrible things you missed.”

“I’m sure the lady Natasha did no such thing,” Thor murmured, his hand straying back to her shoulder. “And I’m sure you had cause.”

“Nope. Baseless as hell. Complete slander.” Lucy tapped the notepad with her pencil. “Quick question, though. Were you and Amora fucking?” Sif made a small choking sound, and Romanoff’s eyebrows shot up. “Sorry. Were you and Amora _lovers_?”

“I....That is to say....” Thor hesitated. Lucy sighed.

“Look, dude, no judgement. If I had a dollar for every time a pretty woman has tried to kill me, I’d be able to clean out both vending machines on the ground floor. Romanoff’s tried to kill me, van Dyne’s tried to kill me, my last serious girlfriend thought the third anniversary gift was supposed to be copper-jacketed lead. It happens. Were you two an item?”

“No. She desired me, and I rejected her.”

“Right before she attacked you?”

“That morning.”

“Hmm.”

“Jan tried to kill you?” Romanoff asked dubiously.

“Yeah, that one time in New York. Almost dropped a half-ton of masonry on me.”

“We never fought you in New York.”

“It was during one of Namor’s pointless little ‘I speak for the sea!’ marches on the UN.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down.”

“It was the one where I turned his banana hammock into a three-piece suit.”

“ _Oh_.” Romanoff coughed slightly. “That was you?”

“I don’t know whether to be appalled that I made that little of an impression on you guys or that you pay that little attention to who you’re dropping buildings on,” Lucy growled. “And who _else_ would it have been? I mean, I guess it could have been the collective subconscious work of the half the city that gets it already and would like him to just dress appropriately for a meeting with world leaders for once, but that sort of spontaneous mass effect doesn’t happen very often. You really all have to be on the same frequency to get shit like that going. Unfortunately, the only frequency all of New York is tuned in to at any given time is ‘low-grade, broad-spectrum hostility.’ Though it does have the odd side effect of ensuring that all the cab drivers are--”

“ _Why_ did you ask about Thor and Amora?” Sif interrupted, cutting her off.

“Oh. Uh, I’m not positive, but I think she might not have _meant_ to hit you so hard your soul fell out.”

“That is somewhat comforting,” Thor said after a moment.

“Well, it is and it isn’t. Obviously, it is in the sense that she might not circle back to finish the job once she realizes you’re back to normal. But it isn’t in the sense that she’s on the loose with powers she may not be fully in control of.”

“Amora has never displayed anything but complete assurance in her power before,” Sif informed her, crossing her arms and sitting back.

“The environment is different. It’s like going from sea level to a mile high, or if gravity suddenly went wonky.”

“If you say so.”

“It’s a theory. Basically, I think when you rejected her, she tried to lash out one way, and the intent behind it got warped to fit earth-rules. I may be wrong.” She chewed her lip.

Sif snorted uncharitably. “It would not be the first time today.”

Lucy glanced at her, then back to Thor. “So, why don’t you tell me about your brother?”

Thor grimaced, a dull ache settling into his eyes. “You wish to dissuade me from my belief.”

“Of course. I think you’re incorrect. But you’re a prince, and you’re technically here as an ambassador, yeah? Surely you’ve been trained in rhetoric to some extent. Take a shot at it. Convince me.”

“For good or ill, I have never been able to convince you of anything once you’d made up your mind,” he said sadly. “And I am not as skilled a speaker as perhaps I should be. I always relied on you for that. You had a way with words.”

Lucy cocked her head. “Unless your diplomacy revolves around starting fights rather than avoiding them, I think that’s another mark against your theory.” Romanoff nodded in agreement. “I’m not saying I don’t have a way with words. I totally do. It’s just that my talents run more towards starting a bar-fight in five words or less than uh, more _socially acceptable_ endeavors.”

Thor chuckled softly. “You were always the one trying to talk our way _out_ of fights.”

“I’ve tried that a few times, but only as a way to line up a better suckerpunch.”

“That sounds more than a little dishonorable,” Sif scolded.

“Fighting fair is overrated,” Lucy answered. She hadn’t clawed her way up through the seething underbelly of the criminal class of superpowers just to turn around and play by hero rules. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d genuinely backed down from a fight. Usually when she was outclassed, she just switched to tactics that gave her more of an advantage. She turned back to find Thor considering her, his expression slightly guarded.

“There were those who called Loki’s methods less than...what a warrior’s should be,” he told her carefully.

Lucy stifled a laugh. “Okay, here’s the thing. Your dude’s a magician?”

“Yes, of course,” Sif snapped. “We’ve been over this.”

“You know what the technical term is for a magician who goes in for straight-up swords and shields bullshit when their magic’s still working fine?” she demanded. Romanoff sighed heavily, suspecting the answer. “That magician would be known as a _fucking idiot_.”

The Asgardians frowned at her, Thor looking hurt and Sif looking angry.

“Don’t scowl at me like that. It’s true. You don’t spend all that fucking time figuring out what the fuck you’re doing with magic and then turn around and throw rocks at people’s heads like a fucking chimp.”

“A true warrior does not resort to trickery,” Sif said coldly.

“I’m sure that will be of great comfort to the aforementioned true warrior when they’re dead of a fireball,” Lucy replied. “Look at it this way--you two have spent how long training for combat?”

“Centuries.”

“Wait, what? You’re _that_ old?” Lucy gave them a second look, then recovered her composure. “Never mind. The point I was trying to make is that you’ve spent I guess fucking _centuries_ training with this shit. Are you then going to go out on a battlefield and, instead of using those weapons that you’ve been training with for almost a fucking _eternity_ , decide that the only honorable method of fighting is open-handed slapping? No, of course not. That would be asinine.”

“To fight with swords, with arrows, with spears...it’s traditional,” Thor explained. “Anyone can learn to use a sword. The use of magic is...not.”

“Anyone can learn to use a sword?” Lucy crowed. “Sure, of course. Anyone can learn to use a sword. How many of them could stand against _you_ in a fight and hope to win with a sword?”

He frowned. “Very few, but that’s not the point.”

“Of course it’s the fucking point. Everyone has _some_ advantage. The playing field is never _exactly_ level. You’ve got the brawn of a fucking ox.” Lucy gestured at Sif. “I’m guessing you’re a little bit more ready than the average bear to just straight up gut somebody. Pretending that it’s all good so long as everybody’s got the same weapon is a farce. Not to mention that the last time I checked, super-hammers and the ability to hit shit with lightning weren’t exactly standard issue.”

“This is true,” Thor murmured, his brows furrowing.

“Thor, please. Think about who it is you’re listening to,” Sif admonished him.

“Yes, everybody ignore what the magician has to say about magic. That makes perfect sense.” Lucy rolled her eyes. Thor gave her the same kicked-spaniel look he’d had earlier, and his hand slid from her shoulder. After a few seconds, she turned to Romanoff. “Speaking of which, how big has Coulson’s wishlist gotten?”

“Beg your pardon?” she replied blandly.

“Coulson. Rogers has had more questions about what I’ve been up to than he has. Presumably because he’s compiling a list.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about it.” The spy gave her one of her pro-forma smiles.

“Of course not.”

“Lok-- _Lucy_ , why don’t you come sit beside me, and I will tell you of my brother,” Thor invited quietly, indicating the free space next to him on the bed. Sif stiffened, about to protest, when Lucy shook her head.

“Sorry, I don’t cuddle with strange superheroes.”

“No? What about Bobbi Morse?” Romanoff scoffed.

“Who?” Lucy asked. The spy pulled up a picture on her tablet and showed it to her. “Seriously? That chick was a superhero? Goddammit. Eyepatch-dude and Coulson were right. My taste in women is fucking _awful_. Maybe I did something really terrible in a past life, like invent speed-dating.”

“Eyepatch-dude?” Romanoff repeated archly. Lucy shot her a thin smile.

“My racquetball partner,” she said. “He’s got fuck-all for depth perception, but I’m naturally really bad at it, so we turned out to be a great match.”

“I think the problem might be that you generally date other criminals and malcontents,” the spy pointed out.

“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t necessarily make them bad romantic prospects. I mean, look at Creel and Titania. And it’s not like Suzy Homemaker tends to respond well to ‘Hey, baby, wanna see my Arc de Triomphe? France won’t have the ransom money together until morning.’ Hell, _you guys_ usually can’t even swing anything long-term with civilians, and you’re not usually under arrest or on the lam if you lose. It’s great so long as they’re mad at their parents or bored with everything else or whatever, but eventually they come to their senses and realize that finding out you’re not going to make your dinner date by seeing you get shot into the stratosphere live on CNN isn’t exciting so much as annoying.”

“Please tell me you didn’t steal the Arc de Triomphe just so you could work it into a pick-up line,” Romanoff sighed.

“I totally did. It was totally worth it, too.” Lucy grinned. “That lady was ten kinds of out of my league. Too bad it turned out she worked for Doom.”

“She tried to kill you, too?” the spy muttered. “Unbelievable.”

“Oh, no, nothing like that. I’d just been hoping for more than a one-night stand. Not in the cards, though.” She spread her hands. “Can’t win ‘em all. Fortunately, I had a huge pile of euros to keep me company after she took off.”

“Should you be admitting to that?” Thor asked, sounding concerned. His hand slipped back onto her shoulder, his fingers curling slightly against her collarbone. She patted it gently.

“Out of SHIELD’s jurisdiction. And honestly, I’m not that concerned about La Gendarmerie fantastique getting their act together on the extradition process. Even if they weren’t currently getting kicked halfway to Siberia by Les Mimes mémétiques, their paperwork skills are atrocious.”

“Loki did not seek the company of women as enthusiastically as you do,” he said pensively.

“His loss,” she replied.

“He and Amora were close, though,” Sif added.

“Close like making out or close like student-teacher?”

“Both,” she said firmly.

“Huh. Is that normally how magicians behave on Asgard?” Lucy asked. Thor and Sif traded confused looks. “What? Is that an embarrassing question, or do you not know?”

“The latter,” Thor muttered. “How do magicians treat the master-apprentice relationship here on Midgard?”

Lucy laughed. “Oh, man. That’s a question. Bonded magicians treat it like a parent-child relationship, usually. Free magicians don’t take apprentices.”

“You people can’t get within five miles of each other without starting a fight,” Romanoff commented, shaking her head.

“Yes. And that’s why we don’t have apprentices,” Lucy explained. “It’s really very simple.”

“It sounds rather chaotic,” Thor commented.

“It’s complete anarchy. I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” Lucy answered, laughing. “So, do you have any other siblings waiting in the wings?”

“It was only ever Loki and myself,” Thor told her. “We were inseparable.”

“Until you weren’t,” Lucy reminded him carefully.

“He was not in his right mind,” Thor said firmly. “The Jotnar--the frost giants--attempted to steal the Casket of Ancient Winters during my coronation ceremony. They were beaten back, but it was still a gross insult and an act of war. I went to Jotunheim without my father’s permission to exact revenge. It was for that that I was banished. While I was gone, Loki discovered that he was a frost giant, not Aesir. He was the son of their king. Laufey had abandoned him during the last war we fought against them. Our father found him and brought him home as his own son. He was alone when he found all this out. I was not there for him. It was too much. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

Lucy pursed her lips. “Forgive me for being dense, but how, exactly, do you spend centuries missing the fact that you’re an alien?”

Thor flushed. “No one knew except for my parents. He looked no different from anyone else. There was no reason to suspect. I can only imagine how he felt when our father told him he was kin to our greatest enemy.”

“So he tried to kill _you_?” Lucy demanded, tilting her head. “I get that people under severe emotional distress tend not to make the best decisions, but that seems a little random.”

“Jealousy,” Sif explained.

“He also killed Laufey and tried to destroy Jotunheim utterly.”

“That makes a little more sense, at least,” Lucy said, frowning. Romanoff shot her a sharp look. “I’m not saying it’s a good thing. Unless these guys are like, space-nazis or something, in which case maybe? I’m just saying it makes _marginally_ more sense to lash out at something that reminds you of what you don’t want to be than someone who didn’t really have a lot to do with it.”

“He was jealous,” Sif repeated, her eyes downcast. “Thor had the love of the people, and the crown, and Loki’s envy ate at him.”

“The people loved Loki, too, Sif.”

She shook her head and rubbed a tear from her eye. “They didn’t, Thor. They loved you enough to humor him. That was all. And he knew it. Eventually, he blamed you for it, and he tried to kill you for it.”

“But he didn’t.”

“Not from lack of trying,” she bit out. “ _We watched you die_ , Thor.” She glared at Lucy. “His need to command love he couldn’t inspire drove him to take your life.”

Thor looked away, and Lucy cleared her throat. “I think you two might need a minute alone. We’ll be outside.”

“Please, don’t go. Stay,” Thor said, his fingers tightening. “Please.”

Lucy took his hand and turned to face him square. The tears glittering in those impossibly blue eyes almost made her look away again. _How the fuck did I get sucked into this? I don’t even fucking_ know _these people_.

“I’m not your brother. I promise you, I’m not. But if there’s anything I’ve picked up over the years, it’s that sometimes you can love someone as much as you want--and they can even love you--but it’s still not ever going to be a good idea to turn your back on them again. And if all that’s what happened the last time you saw your brother, this really sounds like one of those times. I’m sorry. I really am.” She let go and climbed off the cot. “Just let us know once you clear the air here. Romanoff?”

Lucy could feel their eyes boring into her back as she left the room, Romanoff trailing behind her. Volstagg turned to watch them go, while Hogun’s eyes snapped back to the room they’d just left. The waiting room door swung shut behind them, and Lucy ducked into a side room and leaned against the wall.

“This is a fucking trainwreck,” she said flatly. “I don’t know what the hell I was even expecting, but this is just a clusterfuck.”

“Is that why you’re having a panic attack?” Romanoff asked.

“I’m not having a panic attack, I’m having a common sense attack. Dude doesn’t need me in there serving as some weird substitute for his batshit, identity-crisis-having, omni-directional murder-beam of a brother. He needs a fucking counselor.”

“Speaking from experience?” the spy suggested.

“Me? Fuck, no.” Lucy laughed mirthlessly. “Somebody I should be able to trust tries to kill me, that’s it. Dunzo. No more chances. And, seriously? I don’t think that’s a particularly high bar to set. Am I wrong? Is there some weird hero thing I’m missing where somebody stabs you twenty times, but it’s cool and everybody just needs to hug it out? Because in most villain circles, that’s considered a pretty egregious party foul.”

“These people live millenia, Jones. It’s not often they lose one of their own like this.”

“So hook them up with a grief counselor.” Lucy ran her hands through her hair and took a deep breath. “You do _get_ that this is fucked up, right? The healthy response to somebody trying to burn you down because everybody likes you better than them is not to go tearing after them and apologize. I mean, I didn’t twig to it at the time, but when I found him, he wanted to know if I’d forgiven him. Dude tried to kill him, almost succeeded, and he’s still apologizing.”

Romanoff was watching her carefully. “Why do you care?”

“What?” she snapped, startled.

“You only met them yesterday. They’re not your friends. They’re not your allies. You’re not here voluntarily. One of them has threatened to kill you at least once. Why do you care what happens to them?”

“Wow.” Lucy puffed out her cheeks. “You guys drop me into the middle of this and then you ask why I care what it is? And here I thought that I kind of got what happens when you have someone standing behind you whispering ‘It’s for the sake of the nation’ in your ear every time your conscience rears its inconvenient head. Guess I had no goddamned clue. I _care_ about it because you’ve fucking _involved_ me in it.”

“That’s unexpectedly noble of you.”

“Don’t read too much into it,” Lucy grunted. “My vague, free-floating sense of responsibility only goes so far. If this were a job, I’d have already told you to lose my number and beat feet out of here.”

Romanoff crossed her arms. “After Thor dismantled the Destroyer, he went back to Asgard. He and Loki fought. Thor was trying to stop him from destroying Jotunheim and essentially committing genocide. When Thor broke the Bifrost, Loki was thrown from it. It wasn’t intentional, and he tried to save him, but the belief--until they saw you, anyway--was that Loki had died that day.”

“Oh.” That made a bit more sense, she supposed.

Romanoff raised her eyebrows. “‘Oh?’ That’s it?”

“I stand by my previous statement that loved ones who try to off you shouldn’t get another opportunity.”

“Even if it’s temporary insanity?”

“Look, you go murder-crazy once, you’re probably going to go murder-crazy again.”

“If you’re not Loki, we really don’t have to worry about that too much right now, do we?” Romanoff pointed out.

“When I said he needs a grief counselor, I meant _in general_ , not lest he be immediately stabbed to death and then set on fire, Romanoff.” She shook her head. “I’d think you’d care more about his overall mental health than I do. He freaks out and goes on a smash-rampage with that stupid hammer, you’re on the front line for clean-up.”

“So, how long are you planning on hiding out here?”

“Dunno. How long do you think it’s going to take them to hash out two near-death experiences, two counts of treason, one actual death, and four sleepless days?”

Romanoff frowned in concentration. “About an hour.”

“There you go, then.”

“Maybe you could show me some of those magic tricks you weaseled your way out of handcuffs by talking up.”

“If you want?” Lucy offered, confused.

“Agent Coulson said you didn’t know any.”

“Oh. I don’t know any card tricks. Or, to be more specific, I am ridiculously fucking bad at card tricks. I know lots of them, I just can’t do them to save my life. One time I tried to show somebody the old 52 Pickup gag. The fucking things all landed in a goddamn pile.” She rolled her shoulders, cracked her neck, and shook out her fingers. “So, what did you want to see? Prestidigitation’s always been my favorite, but I’m also very good at juggling. Got anything about the size of a lighter on you?”

“Never mind.”

Lucy sighed. Maybe Hawkeye had burned her out on all the circus-type bullshit. Stake-outs with an ex-circus performer had to be more entertaining than the usual regimen of porn, take-out, coffee, and boredom. She did like the flashier sort of standard trick, though. It had been a while since she’d done anything remarkable in front of an appropriately appreciative audience.

“When Sif said that Loki wanted to be loved, you seemed uncomfortable.”

“Are you kidding me? That _whole damn thing_ was uncomfortable. It’s like getting invited over for a family dinner and then having somebody bust out their cancer diagnosis. But yes, that sounded more like a long-running problem than a sudden break. I think they had a lot to talk about.” Lucy gave her a hard look. “You’re not actually going to let me show off, are you? You just wanted to needle me about conning you.”

“Are you sure you weren’t uncomfortable because it hit a little close to home?”

“What, because I’m just burning with this unquenchable _need_ to be loved? Because I’m driven by a sense of entitlement to widespread adoration that I’m constantly _denied_ by the undeserving and the blind? Because the only thing that drives me crazier than knowing people only put up with me because of what I can do is knowing that they love people far inferior to me for _no reason at all_?” Lucy put a hard edge in her voice and fire in her eyes and watched Romanoff pretend not to pay closer attention. 

She broke out laughing after a second’s pause. “For fuck’s sake, Widow, if I’d wanted people to love me, I’d have had them lining up around the block. I could make dreams come true. You make someone young again, whole again, lucky, rich, famous, whatever they want, and they don’t just _say_ it. They fucking _mean_ it.” _Like you meant it when you saw Hawkeye’s arm come back together in front of you when you thought you were losing him_.

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Do I look like a fairy fucking godmother?” Lucy snarled. “I couldn’t give less of a fuck if the proles love me. I ever want a sense of universal adoration, I’ll start knocking ten percent off my standard fee if the client remembers my birthday and puts me on their Christmas card list. The people I like usually like me back. The people I love usually love me back. That’s about the beginning and end of my concern with being loved.”

“At least one notable exception to that, I think.”

Lucy shook her head. “Even her. She did love me, in her own broken and fucked up way. If she hadn’t, I’d have picked up on where we were headed before she tried to blow me away. And she probably wouldn’t still drunk-dial me every six months or so. Probably.” _And I wouldn’t still have those two gunshot scars from her on my back_.

“That’s...ballsy.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

“What does she say?”

Lucy stared at her. “What did I just get finished fucking telling you about not giving people who try to kill you a second chance at it? Fuck if I know what she says. I don’t pick up, and I don’t listen to the voicemails. Not worth it.” She looked around. “Do you happen to know what the plumbing pipes in this installation are made of? Copper, or did the contractor cheap out and go for PVC?”

Romanoff tapped at her tablet for a few minutes. “Copper.”

“I don’t suppose Rogers has any chalk or willow charcoal he’d be willing to part with?”

“For the purpose of...?”

“If Amora does show up, I’ve got a few things up my sleeve that might ground some of her energy. I’m guessing Hill wouldn’t be hugely thrilled by me taking a permanent marker to her shiny new medical facility, though.”

“Let’s get you some chalk, then.”


	15. Chapter 15

Sif shifted her weight uneasily, watching as Lucy stretched upward to chalk strange symbols onto the far wall. Hogun touched her elbow gently.

“You should try to get some rest. Volstagg will keep him safe, and I’ll wake you if anything happens.”

“Do you think she’s Loki?” she asked, her voice tight.

“No. Do you?”

Her shoulders slumped. “I don’t know. It’s easier to think she isn’t, seeing her like this. But if you’d seen what we saw, when she gave the golden apple to Volstagg....And she _speaks_ like Loki. Not what she says, but how she says it. I don’t want her to be, but every time she says something so like him, I want to shake her and demand she account for betraying us all like that. I want to know _why_. I want to know how she could have done everything she did.” She rubbed her red-rimmed eyes. “How are you so firm in your opinion?”

“She doesn’t know us,” Hogun said simply. “Watch her face when she talks to the Midgardians. She doesn’t look like that when she speaks to you or Thor. Volstagg might as well be a piece of furniture for all the accounting she makes of him.” He jerked his chin in Lucy’s direction, and Sif tilted her head. The magician was working toward him and paying no attention whatsoever as he edged away from her.

“Loki treated him much the same, though,” she reminded him.

“Loki would have snapped at him to get out of the way twice by now.”

“She has Thor eating out of her hand,” she sighed. “He’s agreed to be more careful of her, and I think he understands my worries, but...”

“He’ll realize the truth soon enough,” Hogun promised her. “For now, it’s enough that he’s on the mend. Take some consolation in that.”

“Loki tried to kill him.”

“Would any of us behave that differently if we were the ones holding Gungnir when Loki fell?”

She looked away. “Not likely,” she admitted. “What is she _doing_?”

Lucy had climbed back onto a chair and was continuing her line of sigils back up in a different direction.

“I’ll ask. Sleep now while you have the opportunity.”

“Easier said than done,” Sif said, relenting.

Hogun waited until she had stretched across several of the available chairs and arranged herself as comfortably as possible, then let himself into the next room. Thor was sleeping fitfully, and the room was silent but for the tapping of Lucy’s chalk on the wall and the creak of Volstagg’s armor as he fidgeted. He shot Hogun a look of relief.

“What is the purpose of these new runes?” Hogun asked, pitching his voice low.

Lucy looked back over her shoulder at him for a moment, then turned her attention back to the chalk marks.

“They’re directional.” She gestured to the two lines sloping together at a 45-degree angle. “We want any grounded energy going down, not up.”

“Is the purpose not to trap Amora’s magic?”

“Nope. That’s difficult and unreliable. We want to channel it away and out without harming anything.”

Lucy completed the second line and drew a small knot at the point of the V. She tested the weight of the cabinet blocking access to the wall below it and grimaced.

“Here, let me,” Volstagg offered, stepping forward. He moved it carefully out of the way.

“Thank you.” She dropped to a crouch and began work on a double line of sigils that led straight to the floor.

Volstagg blinked at her, then glanced at Hogun, his brows furrowed.

“What?” she asked, not looking up from her work.

“It’s been a long time since anyone’s heard you say those words,” Thor told her.

“Did we wake you? Sorry about that. Try to go back to sleep.”

“Please stop trying to avoid me by encouraging me to sleep,” he grumbled. She’d been doing her best to ignore his presence since Coulson had essentially confined her to his room.

“While I admit that yes, you _are_ easier to deal with when you’re not awake, that’s a bonus. You may not feel injured, but you’re still recovering, and you do need rest.” Lucy chalked one last sign on the floor and sat back on her heels, examining her work. She ran her thumb along one, correcting a small smudge, and then stood, satisfied.

“Would you mind?” she asked, tapping the cabinet. Volstagg warily moved it back into place. “Thank you. And yes, I mean it, it’s not some weird trick or cunning ruse. I appreciate your help.”

“How is Sif?” Thor asked, sitting up stiffly.

“I convinced her to rest. I think she is slightly more satisfied that you will be more on guard than she was this morning.”

Thor twisted the blanket in his hands, then let it go. “I do not like to worry her.”

“Unavoidable, given the situation,” Lucy replied. “At least until SHIELD or the rest of your super-buddies manage to shut Amora down, or you can all get back to Asgard, you’re sitting here underpowered and with a target on your back. She’d be worried even if you didn’t keep trying to bear-hug someone who may or may not be after your head. You could stand to be a little more understanding about it though, I’d wager.”

“You’re not after my head,” Thor scolded. He remembered well how feral Loki had been the last time he’d seen him. The anger and recklessness were etched into his memory. Compared to that, her lack of focused animosity was practically a balm. Even if she did avoid looking at him, vaguely resent him, and wish he’d fall back asleep as soon as possible.

“No, but she’s not sure about that. Strictly speaking, _you_ don’t know that, either,” Lucy said, surveying the rest of the room.

“If you had wanted to attack me, you’d have done so before you lost your ring,” Thor pointed out.

“Yeah, probably. But, you know, tricks and stratagems and fun stuff like that. Can’t be too careful,” she waved her hands in the air and wiggled her fingers, “around _magic_!”

He sighed, fighting the tension that surged up through his nerves at her tone. He could practically feel the argument brewing the same way he could feel a storm gathering. “Are you done making fun of me?”

“I’m actually being somewhat serious. Magicians can be unpredictable. I ran into this one woman once who’d been bonded until she lost her people. I mean, she didn’t get kicked out or shunned or anything, she lost them. They all _died_. I didn’t realize that she’d been uprooted for a few hours, I thought she was just traveling. She was really sweet, except for the part where she turned out to be completely batshit insane.” Lucy made a face. “It came out that she was transforming people who reminded her of the ones she’d lost into little paper dolls and taking them with her wherever she went.”

“What did you do?” Volstagg asked, wide-eyed.

“What I had to,” Lucy said simply, sadness tinging her expression for a moment.

“You fought her?” Thor asked.

She cocked her head at him. “I killed her.”

“Oh,” he replied, his voice small and his stomach turning slightly. Magic had been considered a lesser craft all their lives. Loki had been infinitely proud of it, prouder than they had considered necessarily justified when it came to such a rarefied pursuit. It seemed things might be different on Midgard.

“I’d have preferred not to, but there wasn’t anything else for it,” Lucy explained. “She was too far gone to get settled properly anywhere else, and leaving her like that wasn’t doing anyone any favors.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Anyway, for real. Watch yourself around magic.”

“Including you?”

“Including me,” she said firmly.

“Would you be warning me like this if you were truly dangerous?” Thor asked.

“You don’t really believe me, do you?” Lucy snapped. “Fucking hell. You think I’m your brother, your brother tried to kill you, and you don’t really believe me when I sit here telling you that you shouldn’t trust magicians in general. Maybe that warning is like the no trespassing sign at a zoo--for liability purposes only. You ever think of that?”

“You aren’t a magician anymore, though.”

“Wow. You weren’t kidding when you said you sucked at diplomacy, were you?” she demanded. “Just find that sore spot and stick your thumb right in it.”

“I meant no offense,” he apologized quickly. He didn’t want to fight with her, not now. Why couldn’t he ever keep it from turning out like this?

“I’m still a magician. I’m just temporarily between powers.” She managed a thin smile. “Keep that in mind.”

“I will try to,” Thor sighed. “You truly remember nothing of Asgard? Of our parents?”

“Nothing to remember,” Lucy said firmly. “And I remember _my_ parents just fine. Grandparents, school teachers, nosy neighbors, whole shebang.”

“Were they magicians, too?” Vosltagg asked.

“Huh? No. Magic doesn’t really run in families like that.” Lucy paused, considering. “Here. Magic doesn’t run in families _here_. Is it different on Asgard? Magicians have magician kids?”

“I don’t think so,” Thor murmured, his brows furrowing.

Lucy studied him for a long moment. “I would have expected you to know a little more about magic if you spent centuries being inseparable from a magician.”

He flinched slightly. “Loki guarded his secrets carefully. And I was...not as inquisitive as I might have been.”

“Ah. Never mind, then.” Lucy looked at the floor and chewed her lip. “Maybe I should have asked for a permanent marker after all.” She eyed the window. “And a grease pencil.”

“A word, Jones?” Phil asked, poking his head in the door. Thor could see Clint hovering behind him and waved. The archer returned his greeting, smiling.

“Sure, let’s go. But if it’s about why you thought my middle name was Elizabeth, the word is ‘disappointed,’ and it’s not going to change. Honestly, how do you not have my entire life history documented in one of your sad little SHIELD files by now? I’ve been on your radar for over a decade, I don’t wear gloves or disable security cameras, and I don’t even use a pseudonym. Do I need to start handing out business cards with my social security number on them?”

“That won’t be necessary.” Phil gave her a withering look.

“Could you not speak with her here?” Thor requested, reluctant to let her out of his sight. Exasperation colored her features for a moment, and he sighed.

“I suppose so, if you’re up to having that much company,” Phil said. 

Hogun took his place outside the door again, and Clint leaned next to it on the inside, his gaze wandering the room and belying the tired slouch of his shoulders and neck. Phil settled into a chair and opened a sheaf of paperwork. Lucy took a seat opposite him and stretched her fingers, leaving chalk fingerprints on the back of her hands. Thor’s eyes went to the signs she’d drawn all over the room. He didn’t recognize the script. He’d been hoping they’d be proper runes. He glanced at her to find her watching him.

“Linear B. For water and metal and stone. It seemed appropriate,” she told him. 

He nodded dumbly. Had Loki ever spoken of magic so? He searched his memories and came to the unpleasant conclusion that, if his brother had, he had not been paying attention. Perhaps such revelations were not as weighted here on Midgard, he thought. Perhaps it had been only natural that Loki had been reluctant to divulge what he knew.

“I need to know the layout of Doom’s Tunisian compound,” Phil said bluntly.

“Couldn’t tell you,” she returned with a shrug.

“You’ve been there twice that we know of.”

“And it has been remodeled after every visit. I have no idea what it looks like now.”

“Remodeling? That’s your excuse?” Phil pressed. Thor bristled slightly at the sharpness to his question and wished she’d returned to her cot instead of picking a chair across the room from him. She shot him a warning look, and he steadied himself.

“ _Extensive_ remodeling,” she clarified.

Phil snorted and looked at his notes. “I should just go ahead and assume you were the reason for the extensive remodeling, shouldn’t I?”

“Technically, the rabbits were the reason for the extensive remodeling, but since I was the reason for the rabbits, I suppose that’s fairly accurate.”

Clint made a noise that sounded suspiciously close to stifled laughter.

“Rabbits?” Phil repeated.

“Don’t look at me like that. Doom specifically requested their presence,” Lucy said defensively, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Really.”

“Yes. He had some questions about the _strategic value_ of pulling rabbits out of a hat.”

Phil pinched the bridge of his nose. “So you...”

“Provided the demonstration.” She shrugged. “I have to say, though, I rather assumed a super-scientist of his adventurousness would have had better containment methods on hand. He didn’t even take any notes. It was like he was wholly disinterested in duplicating the results.”

“And the second incident was of course a generous attempt to let him gather the data he missed from the first time?”

“What? No, fuck that dude. I don’t do repeat performances without a standing ovation. The second incident was for the rabbits. They wanted revenge for the way the first time shook out.”

“You _Night of the Lepus_ ed Doctor Doom,” Clint managed, his shoulders shaking from trying not to laugh.

“Again, this was something that he requested. And the man blows up his own buildings at least once a month. I’m sure his insurance adjuster didn’t even blink at the claims.” Lucy spread her hands. “Especially compared to that time I was busting up one of his joints and ran into you, Coulson. Two agencies and an independent operator blow your shit up at the same time? That sort of thing drives them absolutely fucking _bonkers_.”

“Did you keep any of the rabbits, or did they all hop off into the sunset?” Clint asked.

“They moved to Greenland to start a commune. No idea how it turned out, honestly, but last I heard from them there were some political problems developing.”

“Such as?” Phil prompted wearily.

“Turns out rabbits are surprisingly corrupt, given half a chance.”

“And this explains a few things I’d hoped never to have to look into,” he groaned, jotting down a few notes.

“Oh, are they still dressing up like yetis and stampeding through towns?”

“You are a menace, Jones. Honestly.” Phil shook his head.

“Was that all you wanted? Because if you want to talk about Doom, there’s the stuff you wouldn’t let me finish before.”

“I didn’t let you finish because I’d eventually like to be able to sit through a briefing about Doom with Richards present without getting terrible mental images,” Phil said sharply.

“Do I want to know?” Clint asked, his eyebrows arching.

“No. No, you don’t. It’s very disturbing.”

“It’s not that disturbing. I mean, okay, it is a _little_. But in the grand scheme of things, there are way more disturbing discoveries you could be making. Like those isopods that go after snappers--”

“Jones, please don’t finish that sentence.” Phil snapped his file shut. “We’re done here. I’d consider it a personal favor if you could refrain from colonizing populated islands with either super-sized or miniaturized versions of anything in the future.”

“Look me in the eye and tell me you’ve never wanted to ride a rabbit, Coulson,” she challenged.

“I can say with a clear conscience that it’s never come up before, Jones,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Please try not to do anything horrible in the meantime. Barton, you up for guard duty?”

“Always.”

“You’re on until Rogers gets back. No giving her ideas.”

Lucy glared at him. “The day I need ideas from a guy who still uses arrows is the day I hang up my pointy hat and broomstick.”

“Be good, all of you. Thor, don’t over-do it. Hank says you’re still not one hundred percent yet.” Phil slipped out and headed off.

Lucy settled back onto her cot, and Thor curled a hand around her shoulder protectively. The sensation of burning cold he felt whenever they were apart had diminished considerably, but the physical contact was still immensely reassuring. She stiffened slightly but didn’t move to shake him off.

“Hope you don’t mind if I just read for a while?” The edge in her voice told him that it wasn’t really a question. She pulled a Starkphone out of her pocket and tapped the screen a few times.

“Where did you get that?” Clint asked.

“Stark.”

Clint eyed it for a moment, then relaxed when he saw that it was Tony’s personal phone. Even if he’d been stupid enough to put sensitive information on it, JARVIS would have deleted it immediately. Thor leaned forward to watch the screen. 

“You could tell the story of the book you’re reading,” he suggested softly.

“Are you asking me to read to you?”

“It is common on Asgard,” he offered by way of explanation. How often had they spent the rainy days of their childhood playing with their toy swords and shields, pretending to be the great heroes from the story as Loki read it from tomes almost bigger than himself? It seemed so long ago now. And even when he’d been at his most peevish, Loki softened when he was telling an old tale.

“You used to read the old legends from the books in the older scripts and Elven tongues,” Volstagg said hesitantly. “You’d tell us the stories. Some of them gave Sif the footing she needed to badger the instructors into teaching her more.”

“No, I didn’t, and yeah, that hasn’t really been a done thing here since we invented the radio.”

“Come on, what’s the harm?” Clint asked, smiling. He gave Thor a comforting wink over Lucy’s head, and Thor smiled gratefully. “Are you reading something embarrassing?”

“I could if you’d like. Stark’s got a lot of questionable choices on here. Chicken Soup for the Billionaire’s Soul, for instance. Why did somebody even bother writing that? Oh. It’s self-published. By him. Never mind.” Lucy frowned, dragging her finger across the screen. “Twilight, Atlas Shrugged, Catcher in the Rye, Confessions of a Shopaholic....Was his personal assistant mad at him or something? This is spite literature. This is what you put on someone’s phone when you can’t strangle them.”

“Just download some Viking sagas or something.”

Lucy wrinkled her nose. “Dude. Have you ever _read_ any of those things? Turns out Vikings were terrible people. And everybody’s named after the sound of passing out drunk or the sound of an axe hitting somebody’s skull. ‘Ffarfarblargh, son of Kqiiskwishsplat, who was a berserker pirate, did quarrel with Snoristhump the Baby-Disemboweler, over the hand of fair Blargha Blarghsdottir, and they agreed to settle their dispute with a dog-strangling contest.’ I’m not plowing through two thousand stanzas of that.”

Clint leaned forward, his interest piqued. “Come on, I’m sure we can find _something_.”

*****

“The car suddenly veered off the road and we came to a sliding halt in the gravel. I was hurled against the dashboard. My attorney was slumped over the wheel. ‘What’s wrong?’ I yelled. ‘We can’t stop _here_. This is bat country!’”*

Stark and Rogers stopped, bemused by the sight of Lucy reading aloud to Barton and the two Asgardians.

“What are you doing?” Stark interrupted.

“Trying to read a book.”

“Is that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?”

“Yup.”

“You’re reading the pinnacle of western literature’s ‘what the fuck was this guy on?’ genre to two alien gods and a very impressionable SHIELD agent.”

“No, that would probably be Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test or Naked Lunch or anything by Philip K. Dick,” she explained. “This has an extensive catalog of _exactly_ what the fuck this guy was on. I’d have to say it’s more the pinnacle of western literature’s ‘how the fuck did this get published?’ genre.”

“Seriously, where’s the line for an idea is so bad you won’t consider it? Do you even have one?” Stark groaned. “And you,” he turned to Barton, “why are you letting her read them Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?” He gestured sharply at Thor and Volstagg. “Isn’t there something in the SHIELD manual about this not being okay?”

“We are not children, friend Stark,” Thor reminded him.

“I know you’re not, but she’s trying to, I don’t know, turn you evil or something.”

“I am not. I tried some Poe, and we had to explain everything. And then I tried some Grimm, and it turns out that some of the child-rearing practices of medieval Germany are a little suspect by, you know, any reasonable person’s standards, and we still had to explain everything. And then I tried some Pride and Prejudice, and nobody could come up with a good reason for Mr. Bennet not to have challenged Mr. Collins to a duel, so that was ruined. I figured we could just cut to the chase and read something that didn’t make sense to anyone, the author included.”

“No. No reading anything by Thompson to alien gods. You’re _not allowed_.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re not the boss of me, Stark.”

“And is that _my_ phone?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you have _my_ phone?”

“Oh, is it not okay to just steal each other’s stuff now?” she asked innocently. “When did that happen?”

“I’ve been looking for that since this morning. How did you even get into it?” he demanded, snatching it back. He glared at Hawkeye. “How did she even get into this?”

Barton shrugged and spread his hands defensively. “She was already into it when I first saw her with it.”

“You’re no help, Clint,” Stark muttered, checking the phone for damage.

“No offense, but ‘Steve America-Stark’ is not a hard password to guess. And using a star for the hyphen, while super-cute and adorable and everything, does not actually do a lot to improve the security rating.”

Stark gaped at her for a second, his eyes darting from her to Rogers and back again as a deep blush crept up his face. “That’s, uh, not my password. Seriously, that’s not my password.”

“Tony?” Rogers asked, his brows furrowed. “You know my last name isn’t really America, right?”

Barton snickered.

“Screw you guys, that’s not my password, and I’m going to take _my_ phone and go hang out with the part of the squad that doesn’t _team up with supervillains against me_ ,” Stark snapped, storming out of the room.

Rogers chuckled after the door swung shut, shook his head, and then looked at her. “How did you break into his phone, anyway?”

“I didn’t. Mr. Security-Conscious left himself logged in.” She coughed slightly. “I did, however, _reset_ his password to that, so he may be a little touchy for a while.”

“Great,” Rogers sighed. “Okay, Clint, you’re relieved. See if you can get Tony to simmer down a little?”

“I’ll do my best, but no promises.” Barton grinned and then trotted after him.

“We were enjoying that tale,” Thor grumbled.

“You’re a terrible liar,” Lucy chided him. “But it’s kind of you to say.”

“If you’re just story-telling, why not just, you know, tell a story?” Rogers suggested.

“I don’t know any stories with happy endings,” she replied with a shrug. “How ‘bout you?”

“If it’s just the ending that’s the problem, I can’t imagine any story that has Tony freaking out like that is very happy.”

“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure everybody lives. I mean, it’s technically autobiographical. _Somebody_ had to have made it out of Vegas, or it never would have gotten written.”

“Well, what about all the stories that end with everybody living happily ever after?” he asked. “Snow White and Rose Red, or Cinderella, or, uh, Bearskin?”

“Uh, isn't Bearskin the one where the homeless veteran sells his soul to the devil and then his two sisters-in-law kill themselves?”

Rogers put his hand to his face. “Yes, that’s the one.”

“I guess if _that_ counts as happily ever after, sure. Lots of stories. We could start with Hamlet.”

“Nobody survives Hamlet,” Rogers protested.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen it performed, but I’m pretty sure there’s this one guy that’s been out of the country the whole time who delivers a closing monologue and declares himself king or something.” She appealed to Thor and Volstagg. “Either of you two seen Hamlet? Back me up here.”

“I would not have thought Midgardian literature so depressing,” Thor mused. “Your films and television shows are so full of humor and song.”

“That’s a recent development,” Lucy sighed. “They’re a stress-reaction to everything about opera.”

“What’s wrong with opera?” the captain demanded. She narrowed her eyes at him.

“You grew up listening to it on the radio and not being able to speak Italian, didn’t you?”

“Sure, but what does....You’re going to say something terrible now, aren’t you?”

“Not anything worse than the average opera plot? I mean, they’re usually ten distinct and improbable kinds of fucked up. It’s all mistaken identity, reciprocal backstabbing, damnation, and adultery.”

“Even the one with the clown*?”

Lucy stared at him. “Either you’re fucking with me, in which case I’m impressed, or you’ve managed to be on the same team as Stark for how long now without him dragging you to one of those charity black tie events featuring homicidal tenors, in which case I’m _very_ impressed.”

Rogers shifted uneasily. “I’m usually, um, on duty when those things are scheduled.”

“So I’m very impressed, then.”

“But it is not at all difficult to get out of attending those feasts if one does not wish to make merry that evening,” Thor said. “Tony is always courteous about accepting my regrets if Jane Foster cannot accompany me, or if duty interferes with my attendance.”

“I think that might be because Fury threatened to nationalize him if he didn’t stop badgering you to go drinking with him,” Rogers explained. “Since everybody else isn’t representing an alien government, it’s a little harder to get off the hook.” He looked at Lucy. “You’re serious about the one with the clown being sad?”

“Yup.” She sat back and crossed her ankles. “If you’ve got a grease pencil I can borrow, I’ll even refrain from telling you about it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. New York: Vintage, 1998, p. 18.
> 
> * _Pagliacci_.


	16. Chapter 16

Lucy shoved a table against the wall and climbed onto it. With Thor sleeping in the next room and his three musketeers clustering around him instead of hovering around her in case she tried to stab him with a piece of chalk, she just might be able to get some work done. The black wax pencil that Rogers had come up with would do the trick nicely.

“How does this work if you don’t have any magic?” Barton asked from behind her.

“How does a landmine go off without a triggerman?” she countered evenly.

“Magicians have landmines?”

“Magicians have always had landmines.” She signaled Hogun and pointed to the light switch, gesturing for him to turn it off. He gave her a look promising certain doom if she tried anything but obeyed. The glass became significantly more reflective. “In case you haven’t noticed, we really don’t get along with each other very well. Passive mechanisms are a pain in the ass, but since they’re powered by whatever hits them, you just need to know what you’re doing. Hell, if you subscribe to the thousand monkeys theory, there’s a slug in a forest somewhere accomplishing the same thing on accident.”

“Oh, a slug could do this on accident? Huh. My estimation of your skills just improved significantly,” he snorted.

“Keep it up, mister. See if I help your ass out next time,” she muttered.

“What is this going to do, assuming it works?”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “No assumptions, grasshopper. It _will_ work. The question is whether or not we’ll wind up needing it. You know how a window this size right in front of his fucking bed is just _begging_ to have something thrown through it during an attack?”

“I wouldn’t have used those exact terms, but yeah, it did occur to us. The glass in here is bulletproof for exactly that reason.”

“Which would be great, if Amora seemed like the type to roll in with a machine gun. Since she’s not, I figured something that would throw whatever she does show up with right back at her if she cuts loose with it might be a good idea. Now, would you please be quiet? This is actually fairly delicate work, and it’s only going to function like it should if I get it right. Park it,” she pointed to a chair, “and keep a lid on it.”

He did as she asked, and Lucy relaxed slightly. She pursed her lips. The problem with just plowing or bluffing through obstacles, she thought, was that it was easy to get out of practice when it came to more subtle techniques. Of course, the problem with subtle techniques was that some jackass with a bottle of windex and a handful of crumpled newspaper could undo hours of work and make a complete shambles of whatever contingency plans relied on everything still being in one piece.

She let her eyes lose their focus slightly, concentrating on the point where the pencil’s tip met its reflection. The difficult part, once the calculations regarding the window’s size, thickness, and so forth had been made, came from having to inscribe the directives in a space that did not, technically, exist. If she looked too hard or too sharply at it, it would vanish. Barton’s gaze weighed on her. She cast about for a slight distraction, something with a pleasant memory attached to it that wouldn’t intrude too strongly into what she was trying to accomplish.

She hummed slightly, nodding to herself. _There it is_ , she thought. _That’s exactly what I’m looking for_. Some half-remembered make-out session at closing time in a trendy club in Berlin after a successful job, as seen through a glittering dust of the lowest dose of psilocybin and MDMA that a human being could sell without getting punched in the face on general principle.

“ _Wo bist du, wo bist du? So allein will ich nicht sein. Wo bist du, wo bist du_?” she sang softly. It was difficult not to tense when the point clarified suddenly. To seize it would be to ruin it just as she’d found it. She began writing swiftly, but without hurry, keeping her mind away from the task as much as she dared. The script flowed around the edges of the glass, tracing its dimensions and finding their way into the facets of the crystal. It was at once sunk into the depths of the glass and skating across the surface. “ _Die schönen Mädchen sind nicht schön, die warmen Hände sind so kalt. Alle Uhren bleiben stehen, Lachen ist nicht mehr gesund und bald. Such ich dich hinter dem Licht. Wo bist du, wo bist du_?”*

Lucy linked the beginning and end smoothly, leaving no gap or overlap, and slid from the table to examine her work. She tucked the pencil behind her ear and put her hands on her hips.

“You know, sometimes it’s a little unbelievable how awesome I am,” she announced.

Barton stared at her for a second. “I’ve gotta hand it to you, Jones. Of all the criminals with inflated senses of self-worth that we nab, you’re definitely the one who believes in herself the most.”

“Why wouldn’t I? I’m the best.”

“That’s kind of a depressing song, though.”

“Is it? My German’s even worse than my Spanish, and my Spanish is fucking terrible.” She paused. “And is it depressing just in general or depressing for a German song? Because those are two very different things.”

“Just in general.” He got up and looked at what she’d done. “And this will work?”

“Against magic. Don’t go testing it out with Captain America’s shield or Stark’s whatever the fuck that is in his chest.”

“Great. I’ll try to avoid that.” He eyed her critically. “How is your Spanish still that bad? Practically all you do is screw around south of the border.”

“Well that’s just not true, for one thing, and for another, that doesn’t mean shit as far as language acquisition skills are concerned. I mean, even blind drunk I can swing ‘You’ll never take me alive’ in Spanish or Portuguese, but you’d be surprised how far that doesn’t get you when you’re trying to explain to a landlord that he’s a cocksucker and you hope he’s carried off and eaten alive by the army ants infesting the bungalow he just rented you. I mean, he’s usually going to understand that you’re mad at him, but all the nuance is lost.”

“Wouldn’t being a magician sort of take care of the whole ant problem to begin with?” Barton asked.

She scoffed. “Man, ants are gonna do what ants are gonna do. Get Pym drunk enough, I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it. They’ve got a lot in common with that fascist robot of his.”

“Ultron?”

“Yup. Think about it, though. Hive-mind? Check. Self-replicating? Check. Burning hatred of humanity? Check. Impossible to really get rid of? Check. Pym made robot ants, and Ultron is their queen.”

Barton kneaded his temples. “You’re insane, you know that? Why don’t you go get some sleep?”

Lucy shot him a sour look. “I’m not tired.”

“Then why don’t you go pretend to sleep while being quiet.”

“You want me to go be duplicitous around a pack of high-strung, sleep-deprived body-guards? That sounds like a bad idea,” she pointed out. “If it would stop you plotting to get me stabbed, I can just meditate out here.”

“Fine. Whatever. Just stop telling me things.”

“That’s a rotten attitude for someone in the intelligence industry to have,” she observed. 

Lucy picked a chair and curled into it, pulling her legs into a half-lotus and straightening her back. She was tired, just not tired enough to try sleeping in the middle of a bunch of twitchy aliens with diplomatic immunity. She was, in fact, not sure she could _get_ tired enough to think that was a good idea, especially not after the weird dream she’d had during the nap she’d taken. She had enough objection to frogs and their behavior in general. She didn’t particularly need a lasting impression of their eyes as portals to the future. 

She focused on making her muscles relax and regulating her breathing. It might not be full sleep, but she could at least rest. She stretched her senses, feeling a small ache at it. She’d overextended herself ferrying Thor back to the land of the living, and she felt a brief spike of anger at it. Would it kill him to just be moderately grateful for that and stop asking for _more_? Especially since it was a sort of more he shouldn’t want in the first place. _You got lucky, you asshole. He died instead of you. Stop fucking pushing it, take your friends, and go home to your parents_ , she thought. The lingering sense of his guilt and unhappiness and need pricked at her, an aggravation she couldn’t ignore easily. Even when he stopped himself from physically reaching for her, she could feel his desire to do so catching at the ragged edges of her patience.

Lucy loosened her power just a bit more and wished she could sense Amora. It would all be so much _easier_ if she could just track the woman down. Staging a break-out wouldn’t be hard. Fury was already leaning on Coulson about the necessity of keeping her and Thor together, and the novelty of the diplomatic angle was wearing off. If she confessed to something that had been a burr in Fury’s saddle for a while now, she’d be on her way to some black site in the former Soviet Union by morning, Asgardian feelings be damned. As jumpy as Belarus and half the -istans had been about their airspace in the past few months, a few misread instruments and unanswered demands for identification would generate opportunity for escape and plausible deniability. She wouldn’t even strictly need to _challenge_ Amora; she could just get herself a new ring and claim to have swapped hers for a fake while Amora’s guard was down. 

She wasn’t even sure why she couldn’t track Amora. Thor and his companions were vague irritants on the surface of the world. It would be difficult to find them from a distance by the distortion and rippling they caused, yes, but hardly impossible. Amora left no such traces, so far as she could tell. _Probably because she doesn’t wrestle with her power the way he does_ , she thought irritably. He was still like a cracked crucible slopping molten gold everywhere.

Lucy reached out and brushed the edge of his consciousness. He was snared in a nightmare, held fast in a swirling mess of bloodlust and ice, panic and guilt, the pained cries of his friends ringing in his ears and monsters with red eyes surrounding him. Were those the frost giants they’d spoken of, then? She examined them a moment, vaguely surprised at how humanoid they were. She was more used to monsters that looked, well, monstrous. Aside from their size, coloration, and a few minor quirks of appearance, they could pass for human. She touched his mind with slightly more firmness, imparting just a touch of warmth and the idea of safety. The freezing darkness of the nightmare dissolved into the enveloping, easy brightness of a great hall on a feast day. Better. Maybe if he could just manage to stay there, he’d be back on his feet in a day or two. Lucy coiled back in on herself restlessly. 

She’d monumentally overestimated this plan’s potential for entertainment. Aliens were supposed to be fun, with laser rifles and spaceships and oddly-shaped skulls. They weren’t supposed to be immortal Scandinavian wet blankets whose interdimensional portal was on the fritz more often than the transporter in a bad episode of _Star Trek_. She’d met plant-monsters dredged up from the bottom of a swamp and given sentience by a truly unfortunate mix of pollutants and radiation that were better company than the Asgardians. It only served to confirm her opinion that people whose primary means of conflict resolution was stabbing were generally not great conversationalists.

Lucy stifled a yawn and deepened her breathing a little. Barton’s heroic efforts not to fall asleep on watch were almost communicable. She should sleep. She was tired. She needed to stay sharp. She could be patient just a little while longer, couldn’t she? She considered it. The looping ouroboros between her shoulderblades itched. She’d been out of her own form too damn long. It seemed like she hadn’t been home in forever. And now she had a pretty golden hero trying to paste her into his family album and looking like she’d hauled off and slapped him every time she pointed out that she didn’t belong there. Being patient just a little while longer was probably not going to be in the cards.

*****

“You don’t have bilgesnipe here?” Thor asked, his eyes twinkling. “Surely you do. You know, huge, scaly, big antlers? They’re difficult to miss. They trample everything in their path, and their visages are quite repulsive.”

“Pretty sure we don’t. And you have those on your homeworld, do you?” Lucy asked drily, studying him. 

He hadn’t shut up about Asgard once since he’d woken. A solid stretch of sound sleep seemed to have done him a world of good, but it also seemed to have prompted some idea that she just needed to be reminded that she was Loki. If she heard about one more disrupted tournament, drunken pratfall, mysteriously vanishing possession, inadvisable romantic liaison, or booze-sodden, Tolkienesque adventure, she was going to set his bed on fire and go destroy another of Doom’s bases. He didn’t even seem to realize that what he was describing bore more resemblance to a grab-bag of her worst impulses than anything she’d actually do. Every time she’d felt the urge to do something pointlessly and stupidly malicious like permanently shave someone’s head--how the hell would that even _work_?--she’d generally taken it as a sign that it was time to pull up stakes and find something vaguely productive, like armed robbery or turtle harassing or plumbing the depths of some new type of hallucinogen, with which to keep herself occupied until the feeling passed.

“Hey, guys. What are you up to?” Stark demanded, bursting in. Lucy narrowed her eyes. He had the sort of manic grin she’d come to associate with getting blasted with some new type of energy cannon plastered across his face.

“Thor was telling outrageous lies about Asgardian fauna. Why?”

Thor shot her a look of surprise and hope. “You do remember!”

“Once again, no, I don’t, because there’s nothing to remember.”

“Then how--”

“When you were talking about your parents, and all your other friends, and your weird little quests into dwarf forges for weapons and elven halls for magic and troll office buildings for paper clips, you looked a little sad, like you miss it. When you were talking about alligator-moose hybrids from space, you looked like you were telling a joke. The difference is rather marked. Conclusion: bilgesnipe don’t exist.”

“Well, that’s disappointing. I was kind of looking forward to him bringing back pictures from his next vacation,” Stark sighed. He brightened again after less than a second, and Lucy steeled herself. The last time she’d seen him this irrepressible, they had, in very short order, been left standing in a surprisingly large, smoking crater that had previously enjoyed a quiet existence as an AIM base. “ _Anyway_ , guess what I found?”

“Did you really find it, or did you bamboozle some poor SHIELD intern into finding it for you?” Lucy asked.

“Well, if you want to get snotty about it, Natasha found it. But I asked her to, so I think at least part of the credit is mine.” He stuck his tongue out at her.

“Then I guess I’m very proud of you and can’t wait to hear about what it is you’re glory-hounding over now,” she said, her smile like flint.

He glowered at her for a second, then went back to grinning. _We’ll be lucky_ , she thought, _if this doesn’t somehow collapse the entire facility on us_.

Stark whipped out a tablet and opened a video file. He flipped it around so that they could all see it. The camerawork was shaky but professional, and she figured it for a news crew’s unused footage. In the middle distance, Namor was hovering in mid-air over a small contingent of what apparently passed for tanks in Atlantis. Lucy arched an eyebrow at Stark.

“ _This_ is what’s got you so excited?”

“Shh. It’s not just Namor. Keep watching,” he insisted.

“I know it’s not just Namor. I’m just a little perplexed about why you’re so thrilled.”

The camera tracked Namor’s flight for a few minutes, then swung around to focus on the vehicles as they lumbered over parked cars and smashed through a few shopfronts before setting off one car alarm too many. Lucy sighed heavily, and Volstagg elbowed her companionably to shush her before freezing and looking down at her in horror. She rolled her eyes and pointed sharply back to the screen.

“Who dares intrude upon this sacred ground?” rolled from the tablet’s speakers. Lucy grimaced. She’d over-projected the hell out of that line. They’d gotten complaints from ten blocks away afterwards. On the screen, she was sweeping down a short flight of steps. A shimmering gold dress clung expertly to the few curves she had--the seamstress had gotten a dozen red roses every Friday for a month out of that miracle--and flowed down to her ankles, a forest green cape billowed behind her, and a her dark hair was carefully bound up and around a crown of golden antlers, their prongs twining and arching almost half a foot from the base. The black staff in her hands ended in an ornate stag’s head, its chin tucked down toward its breast to form the crook. The recording rolled on, and the woman on screen gestured sharply, silencing the alarms and bringing the war engines to a grinding halt.

Namor dipped lower, his bronze skin glistening in the late afternoon light. The cameras didn’t pick up what he said. If she recalled correctly, it had been his name, followed by a truly ridiculous string of highly suspect titles, and then an insistence that he wasn’t intruding. Thor leaned forward, captivated by the show, and Stark grinned at her.

“You claim the right to set foot here uninvited?” came at a more reasonable volume. His posture indicated that he did, and Lucy thought that that had been where he’d asked who was going to stop him. He’d still mistaken her at that point for some local heroine out to make a name for herself. He’d started declaiming about the many wrongs done by surface dwellers and his just cause, under the deeply erroneous impression that she’d cared.

“Fool! You will suffer the consequences of your impertinence!”

The small figure on the screen raised her staff, and a tinny “Imperius r--!” was cut off by an undignified squawk as Namor’s green briefs were transformed into a charcoal gray suit. He fell like a stone and bounced off the street.

“Kneel before me!” thundered across the scene, almost immediately followed by a laser striking the building’s facade and partially collapsing it. The camera’s angle tilted precipitously as the crew scrambled back.

A much lower-volume, less-theatrical “Christ, van Dyne, will you fucking _watch it_ for once?” came through before the feed was cut.

“That was _you_!” Stark hooted, pointing emphatically at the preview image of her with her head thrown back, staff upraised, and green fabric pooling around her feet.

“Yes, and?” she asked. He deflated slightly.

“Do you have any idea how nuts this drove me? Nobody could figure out who the new hero in town was! I had JARVIS going through data for months.”

“Good?” Lucy offered, unsure of where he was going with it.

“Why didn’t you keep the costume? It looks great. Way better than the stuff you usually turn up in,” Stark pressed. “I mean, not that pinstripes and skirt-suits and that sort of thing aren’t professional, but they’re usually not what supercriminals go for, HYDRA’s legal division excepted.”

Lucy pursed her lips. “You do realize that’s an actual _costume_ , don’t you?”

“Well, yeah. You dressed the part for once. Good for you.”

“No, I mean a literal costume. I was in a play. Namor fucked up our closing night, so I decided to go for broke and do a little performance art and turn it into proper street theater.”

Stark pinched the bridge of his nose, the smile sliding off his face with the same approximate grace shown by the facade the Wasp had blasted off the building in the video.

“This is for a play.”

“Yes.”

“ _This is for a play_?”

“ _Yes_.”

“The one time you put some effort into it, and it doesn’t have anything to do with anything.”

“It had to do with the play,” she pointed out, crossing her arms. Of all the things she’d seen him get far too excited about, she couldn’t think of a weirder one than this. The job she’d been in New York to do hadn’t even gone through, and SHIELD wasn’t in the habit of caring about domestic violence charges and bail-skipping. The play and a new personal rule against working with family-gangs that couldn’t keep from drunkenly assaulting each other over a card game had been the only things to come of it. Between room and board and getting everybody bonded out, she’d actually lost a surprising amount of money on the whole thing.

“You know what? I don’t believe you. I think you just don’t want to admit that you went through a costume phase and actually tried for once instead of just hovering at this sort of baseline that you’ve got going, where you’re too cool to care.”

“Too cool to....You’ve got problems, Stark, you know that?” Lucy shook her head. “If I wanted a job where I had to dress up, I’d have gone to clown college.”

“ Okay, then. What play?” he demanded.

“What?”

“What play was this for?”

“Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”

Stark stared at her, paralyzed for a second by the answer. “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” he repeated flatly.

“Uh-huh.”

“And you’re playing the part of...?”

“Athena, Queen of the Zombie Stags.”

“Ah-ha!” he shouted triumphantly. “That isn’t a character in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat!”

“The director may have had a liiiiiiiittle bit of a drug problem. And he read critics’ reviews incessantly. He made a lot of ‘improvements’ to the script after locking himself in the bathroom with an eightball and a stack of pans.” She shrugged. That play had been fucking awesome. “It was awesome. The whole thing was so gloriously off the rails by the second month of its run that half our audience was showing up baked. We single-handedly depopulated the two closest planetariums’ late-night laser shows. The only reviews that didn’t include the phrases ‘I swear I wasn’t high when I saw this’ and ‘No, really, this happened’ were by people who were high as hell for the whole thing and couldn’t be sure either of those statements were true. The director was personally sued by Andrew Lloyd Webber. For libel. Because he insisted on calling it Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat even after he’d changed everything but the indefinite articles.”

“But...”

“That crown was made of papier-mâché and wire hangers, and the staff was half shower curtain rod. It all went back to the props department after that last show.”

He sagged into a chair. “Papier-mâché? And you don’t even have them anymore? I’m going to pretend you’re just lying to make me unhappy.”

“Think about it for two seconds, Stark. How much would a crown like that weigh if it were actual metal? Hell, even if it was real antler? A _fuckton_. Just moving around would give me whiplash. And look at that cape. My greatest enemy would be revolving doors, not a giant sea scorpion. Never mind that I’d constantly be tripping over the hemline of that dress. There’s nothing about it that’s not completely ridiculous once you get off the stage.”

“But it looks fantastic!” he protested, dragging the slider bar back to her entrance. “Look at it! You could have spent all this time looking like a complete badass!”

“You know, if SHIELD’s got a problem with the aesthetics of my law-breaking, they _do_ have the option of not hassling me,” Lucy snapped. “I’m pretty sure I can get over the rejection implicit in a huge governmental pain in the ass deciding I’m not flash enough for them to be seen in public with. In fact, I’m going to state for the record that I’m completely okay with them declaring me too much of a fashion disaster to bother with, effective immediately.” She gestured down at the sweatpants and t-shirt. “I’ll just charter myself a plane out of here.”

“That’s not how it works,” Stark sighed, looking wistfully at the still image.

“No? You sure? Because if I ever get my ring back, I’m gonna put that to the test,” Lucy told him firmly.

“Oh?” he asked absently.

“Yup. I’m gonna be on the Jumbotron in cut-offs and flip-flops and a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt.” He glared at her, and she leaned in, her eyes narrowing. “I’m not even going to brush my hair. And I don’t mean I’m going to be doing this fashionable bed-head thing you’ve got going, where it’s deliberately mussed to make it _look_ like you don’t give a shit even though you probably spent ten minutes getting it just right this morning.”

“Five minutes,” he mumbled.

“And the cut-offs?” she continued, delivering the coup de grace. “The pockets are going to be sticking out the bottom.”

“You’re horrible. You are a horrible person. I come in here to tell you how great this is, and this is what I get. Why do I even bother?”

“You came in here to crow about having found it and then started criticizing my wardrobe,” Lucy shot back.

“What do you think, Thor? Am I being unfairly characterized here, or are you going to side with the Scourge of SeaWorld against me, too?”

“You know, ‘scourge’ seems a little strong given that all I did was give the dolphins the power of speech for a day.”

“A day when half the elementary schools in the state had field trips there, with full knowledge of how unbelievably vulgar dolphins are,” Stark shot back. “You scarred thousand of nine-year-olds in one go, there.”

“Hey, look, this is me crying a single, solitary tear for the tragedy of fourth-graders hearing the word ‘fuck’ for the thirtieth time that day.” She paused deliberately. “Hang on, gimme a second. Anybody got an onion or some VapoRub?”

“You’re a monster,” Stark huffed.

“No, seriously, I’ve got this.” She screwed up her face, then gave up and flopped back. “Fuck it. I’m not even a little sorry. Just think about all the elementary school guidance counselors who finally found meaning in their lives for a few weeks and let it go.”

“A monster,” Stark repeated. “Seriously, though, I’m being maligned. Come on, lightning rod, back me up here. I was trying to be nice.”

“That is truly an image of you?” Thor asked, his voice soft. She looked at him, then frowned at the somber expressions the four of them were wearing.

“Yeah, why?” Lucy asked. “What’s the problem? Haven’t you seen any video of me in action before?”

“I had, but...this is different.”

“Well, a little. This isn’t business. I was just dicking around in New York for a few months,” she explained. _Goddammit, Stark. They’d gotten this image of me lodged in their heads, and then you had to pull this out_. “No big deal, really.”

Thor rested his fingertips on the edge of the screen, then shook himself. “When was this?”

“It’s been a while. That was like three and a half years ago, I think. Why?” she inquired warily.

“You chose a manifestation that reflected your true self,” Thor murmured.

“The resemblance is striking,” Hogun explained.

“I’m sure I have a striking resemblance to a lot of people. I’m not them, either,” Lucy grunted irritably. “And that was for a play, people. Staged performance. Not real.”

“What if you are?” Stark asked suddenly.

“What if I’m everybody I bear a striking resemblance to? Um, theoretical physicists everywhere cream themselves and spend the next five years submitting increasingly crazed papers to _Science_ , and existential philosophy straight up implodes.”

He scoffed, exasperated. “What if you really are Loki?”

Lucy glared at him. “This is stupid. Like, what if you’re really Mahatma Gandhi?”

“Why do you dodge the question?” Thor asked gently, his eyes searching her face.

“Here’s the thing,” she said, her fingers curling uneasily around her knees. “Even if we assume that your brother is dead, _and_ that, through some bizarre quirk of interdimensional metaphysics, his soul wound up reincarnated _here_ , well before he died _there_...so what? We’re not blood, and we have zero shared experience. There would be no kinship there.” She shifted uncomfortably. “But, like I said, it’s stupid. The odds against all of that stacking up to work out how you think it has are ridiculously high.”

“But it _could_ be true,” Stark persisted. “You admit that Thor could be right, and you could be Loki. It could mean something significant that you picked a look that coincides closely with his brother’s.”

“We _could_ also all be figments of a supercomputer’s imagination. Our dreams _could_ be the reality of another dimension. Unicorns and leprechauns _could_ exist and be secretly manipulating stock prices to their own nefarious ends. Just because something _could_ be true doesn’t mean it is, or even that it’s likely. You’re a scientist. You know that.”

“So you do totally admit that Thor could be right.”

“Stark?” she asked, rubbing her arm.

“Yeah?”

“Exactly what are you trying to accomplish here? Because if it’s just having the last word, you may want to do that when it’s not about whether or not the alien prince with the magic hammer has a supervillain for a sibling.” _A supervillain who genuinely doesn’t need a sidekick or a savior_. She shot him a mirthless smile. “Just a thought.”

“Oh. Right.” Stark frowned. “Ah, fuck it. I still think Thor’s right. You secretly being an alien would explain a lot.”

“You are the least responsible superhero I’ve ever met, Stark. Hands down. This conceivably tops the time you let Justin fucking Hammer hijack your bestie and fly him around town like a nuclear-powered model airplane. _You are bad at your job_.”

“I didn’t _let_ Hammer do anything,” Stark protested.

“Except turn your bro into a life-sized doom-puppet. I mean, come on, Stark. It’s Hammer we’re talking about. Do you have any idea how bad that looks? AIM hijacked a shipment of his stuff once. After they’d sifted through it for a while and started reverse-engineering it, they were seriously considering putting a hit out on him on general principle. As it is, he made official heretic status in their weird little religion.”

“Yeah?” Stark frowned. “Where do I stand with them?”

“I don’t know, really. Once I found out it involved some sort of ‘communing’ and that the communing necessitated a jizzmopper, I kind of stuck my fingers in my ears and hummed really loudly until they stopped trying to explain the techno-theological ramifications.”

“I...think I’m going to go invent brain bleach,” Stark mumbled, looking horrified. “I’ll see you all later.”

“That was unkind,” Thor sighed as the door swung shut.

“He had it coming,” Lucy assured him. “And I’m reasonably sure that you don’t know what a jizzmopper is, considering the fit he threw when I tried to read you that book.”

“I know it upset him,” Thor pointed out. “Are you going to explain it?”

“I think Coulson would shoot me if I did that, so no.” She smiled thoughtfully. “You could ask Barton about it, though. He’d probably tell you.”

“I do not believe Agent Coulson would shoot you,” Thor said soberly. “And I would not allow him to do so, in any case.”

“That was a joke, Your Highness,” Lucy told him, recoiling slightly. _This is getting out of hand_. “And I’m pretty sure that you interfering in earth law-enforcement activities without SHIELD’s permission would constitute a _diplomatic faux pas_.”

He frowned at her.

“Perhaps chew on that for a while and leave me be,” she snapped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Rammstein. Rosenrot, “Wo bist du?”


	17. Chapter 17

Phil watched Jones as she shifted uneasily in front of him, her arms crossed and her eyes narrowed as she glared at the Asgardians on the other side of the window. She’d been in a foul mood since Fandral had returned with a pair of healers and three more warriors.

“Penny for your thoughts,” he offered.

“What sort of maladaptive motherfuckers get word that their crown prince got jacked up by a magician and then turn around and send two magicians who couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag?” she growled, her shoulders tensing even further. “This is just fucking embarrassing. It’s like watching the Army decide that the answer to the Hulk wiping the floor with one platoon is to send in two platoons and a food truck.”

“So you don’t rate our chances of defending against another incursion by Amora very highly?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“You won’t mind getting transferred to another facility, then.”

“We’re leaving already? Just when I was halfway to Stockholm Syndrome.”

“You’re not even a quarter of the way to Stockholm Syndrome,” Phil retorted. “You don’t have any arguments against it you want to throw out there?”

“Nope. In fact, I’m kind of looking forward to it,” she said flatly. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, Coulson, your underground cement box full of self-medicating, manic-depressive, superpowered man-children, government goons, and ex-KGB human weapons,” her eyes slid to Natasha, then back to the Asgardian healers, “is great. I’ve definitely picked up a few ideas for decorating my summer home during my stay here.”

“See? This is definitely not Stockholm Syndrome talking. What are you up to?”

She snorted. “I’m a rambler at heart. I just can’t stand to stay in one place too long.”

“You seem supremely confident in your eventual escape,” he pointed out. Her air of absolute conviction never stopped subtly disturbing him. Some of their regular opponents had a certain zealotry about the rightness of their cause or over-confidence in the likelihood of victory, but, on one level or another, most of them seemed to be having a one-sided argument with reality. They were trying to persuade the world to agree with them. Jones projected a sense of being in conspiracy with reality against the rest of them. She smiled at him, the spark in her eyes making him wish his gun had real bullets in it.

“Agent, do you know how much time the average HYDRA agent spends in SHIELD custody?” she asked brightly.

“Not right off hand, no.”

“Five days,” Natasha supplied.

“Four days, twenty hours,” Jones corrected. She drummed her fingertips against her arms. “You know how bad most of those guys suck?”

“That, I’m more intimately aware of,” Phil answered.

“So I’m thinking you can see where I’m coming from here.”

“You are aware that our loss rate from special custody is much lower than our loss rate from standard detention?” he asked, slightly irked.

“Oh, I qualify for special custody now? How’d I swing that? One too many late-night calls to your personal cell? If it’s that Bakersville thing where I replaced every stoplight in town with a traffic circle, I had a really good reason. If it’s that time I covered Little Rock in ducklings, I had a good reason, but I have to admit it doesn’t qualify as a _really_ good reason.”

“Ducklings and urban-planning-related mayhem notwithstanding, I think it was sometime between you burning through half our most-wanted list by yourself with no support network and an alien political leader deciding you’re his long-lost brother.”

“So what, I’ve been flagged as an insurance policy in case Asgard gets out of hand?” She chewed her lip. “I don’t see that working out as well as Fury might think. Dude seems kind of...intense about this. And there’s the whole part where it’s not true.”

“I think the director plans to make a persuasive case for it being in your best interests to get a little less insistent on that score.” Phil shrugged. He didn’t much care for the idea. Things tended to get out of hand quickly whenever Jones was involved. He trusted Fury to know what he was doing, though.

Jones smirked. “And I think the director’s going to make a persuasive case for it being in my best interests to get a little less insistent about his mom.”

“Well, that’s a mature response to the situation.”

“You say that like you expected better.”

“I did,” Phil sighed. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Jones, but you’re in rather a lot of trouble.”

“You remember that time I drew dicks all over Iron Man’s armor?”

Phil sighed. “I remember some disjointed and borderline hysterical voicemails from Tony that now make a lot more sense, yes.” Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Natasha hiding a small smile.

“That was _you_?” she asked.

Jones rolled her eyes. “Why do you people even bother asking that anymore? Given the choice between it being me, and it being some random henchwoman who not only stuck around during a full frontal assault by SHIELD but also had the access codes to release the kraken, as it were, when is it _ever_ the latter? I mean, unless the organization in question is primarily composed of Russians, in which case it’s a toss-up.”

“I thought you were banned from AIM after you unionized their robots.”

“I was. Turns out they don’t have any idea who’s in the hazmat suits, either. I mean, sure, you look like a tool wearing one of them, but you pretty much get the run of the place in exchange.” She shrugged. “Anyway, you remember what else was going on at the time?”

“That was one of the incidents with the sea scorpion, wasn’t it?”

“Yup. Literal fight for my fucking life. And, you know, the future of the planet.” She rocked back on her heels, then forward onto the balls of her feet, her fingers tightening on her arms as one of the Asgardian healers examined Thor. “I think you can see where I’m going with this.”

“That if you could take the time during that to plaster Tony’s prize possession with obscene graffiti, you’re unlikely to treat this with the gravity it deserves.”

“Got it in one. Give the man a prize,” she muttered. “This is just fucking sad, you know that? Who trained these people? They’re poking at him like they expect to find a physical wound. Do they just not fight with magic on Asgard? Because it kind of sounded like at least some of them do, from what Thor was saying about his brother. Maybe they just have really bad aim, so nobody ever bothered to figure out how to treat magic injuries.”

“If you think you could refrain from starting a duel, you could try talking to them.”

“You think Sif’s up to translating? Or do they all speak English?”

“None of them speak English.”

“So you think Sif’s up to translating?”

“Sif doesn’t speak English either,” Natasha clarified.

“Wait, what?” She tilted her head, studying them. “ _Huh_. That is...odd. And _subtle_. What are they really speaking? How do we hear English when they talk?”

“I’m not sure. Thor tried explaining it once, but I don’t think he really understands the underlying mechanics himself. It makes liaising with foreign contacts a lot easier, though. So, do you want to try explaining things to them?” Phil asked.

“Nope. They want to be galloping thundercunts about this, who am I to stand in their way? Or, to address your second condition, who am I to refrain from pointing out that they’re being galloping thundercunts about this?” She put her fist to her mouth and watched them with renewed interest. “Who’d have thought the aliens would have a handle on Babel? That is just intriguing.”

“I’m sure you and Thor will have plenty of time to discuss it once he’s well, you’re settled, and he has time for visitation.”

“So, when do I leave for my shiny new cell?” she asked.

“As soon the transport’s ready and Thor’s good and distracted,” Phil sighed.

“You’re kidding.”

“Problem?”

“You know, if you think there’s going to be an argument, and that argument’s going to be with a guy who can fly and throw lightning around, I’d qualify anything as likely to move that argument from a ground-based location to the back of a fucking cargo plane as a problem.” Jones shot him a questioning look. “I totally get why you’d want to sneak out the back instead of explaining how you intend to play keep-away with his next-of-kin for the unilateral benefit of the American government, but unless we’re all getting issued jetpacks for the ride, I can’t endorse it as a good idea.”

“I’m almost impressed that we’ve managed to discover something you’ll think twice about doing,” Phil commented.

“Oh, Coulson. How long have you known me? I think twice about doing _most_ things. I just do them anyway. Hell, the time I challenged Baron Zemo to a swordfight, I thought about it three times before going for broke.”

“I don’t want to know.” He really didn’t.

“I lost on a technicality,” she told him anyway. “Turns out non-stop impotence jokes during a match and transmogrifying your opponent’s sword into rubber count as poor sportsmanship. But I think I came out the practical winner on that one, judge’s decision be damned. Dude couldn’t get laid for a year afterwards. If you can’t beat ‘em, cockblock ‘em.”

“And that’s a mental image I never wanted.”

“I’d apologize, but we both know I’m not sorry.” She shifted her weight from one foot to another, her eyes narrowed. “Maybe you should just, you know, send him home for a little while until Amora can be captured or vaporized or whatever the plan with her is. Evacuate the consulate, as it were. Two birds with one stone.”

“I have to confess that I’m a little surprised you’re not looking to leverage him against us,” Phil said carefully. “It would make sense, given your current circumstances.”

“Xenu on a surfboard,” Jones hissed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Are there some blinds we can close or something? I can’t keep watching this. It’s amateur hour in there. I’m beginning to understand why every teacher I’ve ever met is a closet drunk.”

“You could do better?” Natasha asked, her gaze not leaving the Asgardians.

“Not without my ring, but then again, they’re not really doing anything of use.” Jones leaned against the wall. “It’s like watching a confused turtle try to hump a bowling ball.”

“And there’s another one,” Phil grunted. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“Oh, was that a question? I thought you were just trying to impress me with how clever you are. Which, granted, you _are_ an incredibly clever man, for an authoritarian thug in a cheap suit, and I _am_ appropriately impressed.” Jones shot Natasha an ugly look. “Simmer down, Widow. This isn’t the part where I try to wedge a pen in somebody’s eye socket.”

“Would you like me to rephrase it in the form of a question?” Phil prompted cheerfully. She scowled at him.

“I’m not looking to leverage him against you, as you so prosaically put it, because he’s a problem, not a solution. Special custody or not, I _am_ going to escape. And when I do, I’d prefer not to have a fucking centuries-old alien chasing me across the globe yelling ‘Brother, let us feast on weird alien animals that may or may not taste good!’ at the top of his lungs. It would be especially nice if I didn’t have to deal with that _and_ whatever passes for police over there trying to serve a warrant for attempted fratricide, accomplished patricide, half-assed genocide, fraudulent seizure of the throne, etcetera, etcetera. I mean, look at how his friends behave towards me, and they don’t really believe him. And, assuming they did believe him, I think they were supposed to have been kind of his brother’s friends, too.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t. On top of all that fucking shit, which should be more than enough by itself, what if he convinces _his parents_ that he’s right? There could be _more_ of them, and they could be officially in charge of everything over there, and it could turn into an even _bigger_ shitshow. I mean, I can kind of deal with a dude running around insisting he’s my brother, but if some lady shows up claiming to be my real mom, I’m going to start slapping the diplomatic immunity right off of people. This is genuinely not a mess I’m super-eager to spend the next _several decades_ trying to sort out, particularly given my history with sorting things out. So that’s where I’m at with it. I’d think you’d be a little proud of me for actively trying to avoid having to set fire to the crown prince of an advanced alien civilization instead of constantly questioning my motives for not causing trouble.”

“I might be prouder if it weren’t for the part about how this trouble would get in the way of the normal trouble you plan to go back to causing,” Phil remarked.

“Well, okay, yes, point. But it’s trouble that’s way less troublesome than the trouble I could be causing if I decided to play it up and be all ‘Yeah, I totally remember growing up together. That one time we all got drunk and smashed shit with hammers was rad!’ like you guys apparently want.” She paused. “Man, you know I did get completely trashed once and smashed everything with a hammer? Not as satisfying as you might think. I probably used the wrong-sized hammer.”

“Would it kill you to just admit the _possibility_ that he’s right?” Phil asked. “Tony said you’d already done as much. Now isn’t really a good time for pride to cloud your judgment, Jones.”

“If I wanted a shiny new family of stab-happy fuck-ups, I’d be camped out in the Santa Susanas and spend my weekends trawling San Francisco for burn-outs with a lot of free-floating resentment toward society for not recognizing their genius.” Jones shot him a thin smile. “Not a bad idea, actually. We could make a name for ourselves by replacing vegetarian homeowners’ tofurkeys with the real thing and scrawling the lyrics to “MMMBop” on people’s walls in high-VOC paint. The confused headlines practically write themselves. _Newsweek_ could work themselves into a frenzy about how we can’t even generate properly murderous hippies these days.”

“On that note, I think it’s time for us to be going,” Natasha murmured. One of the healers had placed her hands on Thor’s face, and the amber light pouring from them was too dazzling to look at directly.

“If you say so,” Jones grunted, falling in between them. Phil frowned at the tense line of her neck and the bunched muscles of her shoulders. She was on edge. He did a mental inventory of what she had on her and fell back a half step. “Quick question, though. Should I start prepping for a show-trial, or are we skipping straight to indefinite detention? If it’s a show-trial, can I designate a stand-in to actually attend everything? There’s this Kim Jong-il impersonator I’ve been using for all my public performances--”

“Hey, where are you guys going?” Tony asked, leaning out of one of the unused rooms. Jan and Hank were watching, annoyed, from their seats at a table with a deck of cards and a pile of IOUs.

“Down to the corner store for some smokes. If you’re good for your mom while we’re gone, we’ll bring you back a soda pop and a pack of gum, sport,” Jones said.

“Not now, Tony,” Phil said firmly, trying to steer him back to his poker game.

“The nearest corner store isn’t for two hundred miles, and I’m pretty sure that’s just what people say when they’re sneaking off and never coming back,” Tony retorted, twisting under Phil’s hands and addressing Jones over his shoulder.

“ _Not now, Tony_ ,” Natasha hissed.

“And where’s Hawkeye? Is Hawkeye going with you, too? Jones, you can’t have all the agents. You have to leave at least one of them here. Hank is terrible at Texas hold ‘em, and Jan’s a sore loser.”

“Hey!”

“Sorry, babe, it’s true. Hank, back me up here.”

Hank studiously avoided Jan’s glare and didn’t reply.

“Stark, we will talk about this later. Right now, just go back to your game,” Phil ordered.

“What’s the hurry, Coulson? I’m sure nobody’s going to leave you behind,” Tony laughed. “This isn’t exactly LaGuardia. And even if it were, I’d still be sure nobody’s going to leave you behind. Oh, hey, Thor. Your entourage get you all straightened out?”

“Damn it,” Phil muttered under his breath.

“Agent Coulson? Lady Natasha? What is the meaning of this?” Thor asked quietly. 

Phil turned to meet his searching gaze and sighed. “Now that we have the resources to adequately deal with Amora here, Jones is being moved to a more secure facility.”

“I thought we had agreed that she should remain here, at least until Amora has been captured,” Thor rumbled, frowning.

“SHIELD has re-assessed the likelihood of her being specifically targeted. You’re most likely going to be Amora’s primary, and only, target. With you defended by Asgardian forces, Jones is a distraction, so she is being relocated.”

“I do not believe she is a distraction, and I would much prefer it if she remained here,” Thor replied, his expression darkening.

“That’s not up for discussion, Thor. The decision has already been made.”

“I won’t willingly be separated from my brother again, Agent,” the prince said, his hands curling into fists. “There is no cause to move this woman now. I ask you to leave her here.”

“Not an--”

“Is that an official request from the Asgardian crown?” Jones asked archly.

Thor shot her a pleading look. “Will you not be silent, for once in your life?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll just let you two get back to arguing about what happens to me, then. Far be it from me to weigh in on this topic.” He flinched. “Agent Coulson, I believe you were in the middle of some unimpressive posturing on behalf of the new world order?”

Phil put his hand to his face. “Stop helping, Jones.”

“I do not have your skills with magic,” Thor said urgently. “The runes you have left will help me without your presence, but if you are not with me, I cannot protect you. I need you to stay.”

“Thor,” Phil began, annoyed at the conversation happening around him.

“If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t need anybody to protect me at all,” Jones pointed out. “Not to mention, I’ll need a lot less protecting if I’m not hanging out in the general blast radius of whatever Amora winds up aiming at your head the next time she shows up. You’ll have to forgive me if I find your argument a little less than compelling.”

Thor grimaced, his gaze shifting back to Coulson. “What if it became an official request from the Asgardian crown?”

“That’s _great_. You don’t like what I have to say, so just ignore it,” Jones grumbled behind him.

“It’s not, and we both know it,” Phil said gently, doing his best not to acknowledge Jones.

“I believe my father would not be best pleased if I found my brother only to lose him again,” Thor insisted.

“You’re a terrible liar,” Jones commented sourly. “You know damn well there’s no loss involved here.”

“If Amora found you with only a handful of mortals to guard you, you would be well and truly lost,” he growled. “It is not a risk I wish to take. If you remembered her, it’s not a risk you’d wish to take, either.”

“There’s nothing to remember--”

“Thor, I appreciate your feelings on the matter,” Phil cut in, “but this comes from the top, and I am going to carry out my orders as given. We’re leaving, and we’re leaving now.”

“No.” Thor caught the look on Jones’s face. “You will not dissuade me from this,” he told her.

“No, of course not. Wouldn’t dream of making the attempt. Far be it from me to even _bother_ trying to talk you out of getting into a fight with Asgard’s allies and your own friends and then dragging Asgard into a war with a planet that can’t really stand against it over someone who _might_ be your brother but _definitely_ doesn’t remember you or care.” She shrugged. “Arguing with crazy is a habit I’ve grown out of.”

Thor closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “What would you have me do, then?”

“Well, you could try being sensible. Listen to Coulson when he says whatever reassuring bullshit he should be coming up with right about now. Pay some slight amount of attention to how hard your friends are willing you to back down off of this.” She craned her neck. “Hey, Sif, who do gods pray to when they want things to turn out well?”

“Jones, you maybe want to quit while you’re ahead?” Stark suggested, eyeing Thor carefully.

“If I ever did that, I’d have been able to afford a volcano lair and henchmen of my own by now,” she snapped. “Anyway, you could also try accepting that sometimes things don’t turn out the way you want them to, and that’s okay, and it doesn’t mean you fucked anything up. And, I guess, you could try considering the possibility that things will work out all right even if you’re not standing right there to make sure of it. And maybe after that, you could stop staring at me like I just stabbed you in the heart, because I’m really not sure how that’s a called-for response to any of this.”

“Son of Coul, will you swear to me that you will do everything in your power to ensure that she is safe while I cannot?” he asked, his voice pitched low and urgent. Phil thought for a moment, then nodded and offered his hand. They clasped hands, and Natasha kept a close eye on Jones.

“Well then, now that we’ve got that sorted, I’ll see you later,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “Have fun. Take care. Try not to get killed by a stray sorceress.”

“Jones,” Natasha hissed.

“We should go,” Phil muttered.

“Be well,” Thor sighed heavily, looking for all the world as if he might change his mind. Sif took his arm and tried to guide him back toward the healers.

“Come _on_ , Jones,” Phil said firmly, inclining his head toward the elevator. She didn’t speak again until they were safely on their way to the surface.

“See? Argument over. If we’d had that on the flight out, we’d have had an argument about that _and_ about the whole sneaking off thing. I hate arguing about two things at once. You ever trying explaining why you’re making out with someone’s sister at the same time you’re trying to explain that you don’t think her sister is prettier than her? Can’t be done. And I say that as someone who generally doesn’t hold with the idea of _anything_ being impossible.”

“He makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t he?” Natasha asked casually.

“What, him? Of course he doesn’t make me uncomfortable. What’s there to be uncomfortable about? I mean, he’s just a royal deity from another planet who has the backing of an extra-legal government agency and may or may not be completely off his rocker. Kind of reminds me of like, a big teddy bear or maybe a golden retriever who’s into extraordinary rendition.”

“That’s not why he makes you uncomfortable, though.”

“No?”

“He makes you feel guilty.” Phil shot Natasha a questioning look.

“Well, I mean, I’ve got a lot to feel guilty about, don’t I? Saving his life, trying to talk him out of his weird delusion, fixing up his hospital room to make it less likely his psycho not-an-ex will have a harder time murdering him if she comes back...I’ve pretty much ruined everything, haven’t I?”

The elevator doors slid open.

“Director,” Phil said, straightening. Fury arched an eyebrow.

“Shit,” Jones muttered under her breath.

“You’re behind schedule, agent. Anything to report?”

“Thor expressed some objections to Jones’s transfer. He’s been persuaded to accept it.”

“Good enough for now.” His gaze swept over Jones, who managed an insincere smile. “Nothing to say?”

“Just one phenomenally inadvisable your-momma joke, but I think I’m going to keep that one under my hat,” she replied coolly.

“You sure about that?” he challenged.

“Pretty sure, yeah.”

“Huh. You’re capable of learning something after all.” He smiled slightly. “I’m not sure I like that development. Get her on the plane, Coulson. Romanoff, I want hourly check-ins and immediate advisement of any status change here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Phil herded Jones up the ramp as Natasha headed back to monitor Thor. She was aggressively humming a jaunty tune, and he gritted his teeth. “Would it kill you to behave yourself?”

“I helped, and I didn’t tell the joke. I don’t know what else you want from me, Coulson.”

He buckled her into a seat. “Hands.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“Fine.” She extended her hands grudgingly, and he snapped a pair of cuffs around her wrists.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t slip them for the hell of it.”

“And I’d like you to know that I’m strongly considering your request.”

He sighed. “Do me a favor?”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Pretend, just for a few hours, that you give a damn. Don’t do anything stupid, don’t make me shoot you in the leg, don’t land yourself in a severe-restricted-access location, don’t precipitate an interplanetary war that, as you pointed out, earth is unlikely to win. Just... _don’t_.” Her smile turned too sharp for his liking. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Jones...”

“You reminded me of someone, is all.”

“Yes, your father. You’ve mentioned.”

“No, someone else.”

“Why don’t you tell me about it?” he invited, sitting down next to her and fastening his own harness.

“Maybe someday, Coulson. I doubt it, though.”

He rubbed his eyes. “I’ll give you a gold star if you behave.”

“Wow.” She started laughing. “I am going to feel very bad about disappointing you, you know that? But I guess I can try not to.”

“That’s all I ask.”


	18. Chapter 18

Lucy toyed with the handcuffs restlessly, then elbowed Coulson. Fury looked up from across the aisle, his gaze boring into her. If it weren’t for the steady drone of the engines, she thought she might actually be able to hear the most prominent vein on his scalp throbbing.

“You got any gum?” she asked. “I need to pop my ears.”

“The cabin is pressurized,” Fury said.

“Is that a no, or is that just you being a jerk?”

“I don’t have any gum,” Coulson told her. “It’s a moot point.”

“How does Stark deal with altitude changes? Is that suit pressurized, or does he just put up with it? Seems like it would get kind of painful if it’s not.”

“Jones,” Coulson said warningly. She flashed him a quick grin and fell silent.

It was amazing, how much better she felt just being out of sight of that blond lummox and his constantly-hurt expression. She felt practically _unburdened_. Lucy settled more comfortably in her seat. All she had to wait for now was an opportune moment to slip away. It would be more difficult with Coulson and Fury sitting right there, but she was confident that she could manage it. And then, on to freedom. Freedom, and a long to-do list. Buy a replacement for her ring. Go kick Mimir out of the tree. Find Morgan and punch her right in her stupid mouth. Write a thank-you card to Frau Doktor Nein. Probably a few apology letters, too, given precisely how many facilities she’d broken into, blown up, and/or left riddled with corpses. She was reasonably sure she still had a stack of form letters sitting at home that would be appropriate. And something about whales? She’d had some ambition concerning whales. 

And that thing that the Asgardians could do, where their speech was perceived as whatever language was appropriate...that bore further investigation. It wasn’t that not being able to speak anything but English more adeptly than an angry harbor seal bothered her, in the grand scheme of things. She’d found that, with a suitable amount of patience, artillery, and facility with pantomime, almost any basic concept could be adequately conveyed. But the poetry of it was lost. And the ‘almost’ most _decidedly_ did not include ‘I am extremely sorry, I had the wrong address’ and ‘I’m not with these people, I don’t know why they’re doing any of that.’ And she had to admit, the idea of being able to stop hobbling along with a suspect dictionary and speak other languages fluently without having to _work_ at it was decidedly appealing. That there had been magicians before who’d accomplished it meant that it could be done. It was merely a question of figuring it out.

“Would you please stop humming?” Coulson muttered.

“Huh?” she asked, her attention snapping back to him. A quick glance around the passenger compartment revealed that Fury and the handful of agents were all staring at her. “Sorry, I was humming?”

“The Habanera,” Fury confirmed.

“I apologize? For humming?” she volunteered hesitantly. “Was it really _that_ annoying?”

“You know, right about now, the super-scum we haul in are usually more than a little unhappy about it,” Fury pointed out.

“Romanoff said something along the same lines earlier. Do I _have_ to be miserable while in SHIELD custody? I’d think you wouldn’t be that put out by someone being a little less unpleasant about everything. Like, am I going to get more time tacked onto my sentence for smiling at you guys?”

“Would it stop you if I said yes?”

“Probably not. Like I told Romanoff, I’m just inherently upbeat when I’m not hung over. I have a very sunny disposition. I think it’s because I got hugged enough as a child.”

“And yet that somehow didn’t stop you from ending up here,” Fury grunted. “Your parents must be very proud of themselves.”

“Dude, it’s not their fault they bought it when I was young,” Lucy said defensively. Coulson shot her a sharp look. “Though I like to think they would be, you know, maybe just a _little_ , if they hadn’t. I mean, not to brag, but I am _very_ good at what I do. And I did just save the world. Probably.”

“So I heard, and so you say,” he snapped.

Lucy grinned at him. Without the end product hanging around moping at her, it was easier to preen over that. No robe-wearing, wand-waving motherfucker had accomplished anything close to it in the past several centuries. She was definitely due a little bit of self-congratulating on account of it.

“You’re doing it again,” Coulson sighed.

“Humming an aria from Carmen?”

“Just humming.”

“Man, you may want to rethink the lighting in that facility. If just getting out of there is enough to have me humming at you all for no reason, I think I might have been getting Vitamin D-deprived in there. It can’t be good for people who are trying to heal,” she groused.

“We’ll take it under consideration,” Fury snorted.

Lucy rolled her eyes and fidgeted silently for a few minutes before elbowing Coulson again.

“When do you want to get set up so I can show you how to get out of the underworld?” she asked.

“No,” Fury said firmly before Coulson could answer.

“But I promised him--”

“No. You are not taking one of my best agents to hell with you.”

“But I’d bring him right back.”

“I said _no_ , now drop it.”

“Okay, fine. But don’t come crying to me when some asshole part-timer finally gets lucky, and you’re attending a funeral.”

Coulson rubbed his temples and seemed to be doing his best to pretend he was somewhere else.

“I swear to God, Jones, if you weren’t currently a necessary part of our diplomatic outreach to an alien world, I would throw you out of this plane.”

“Because I’m offering to help? Pfft. I’m beginning to see why Strange isn’t returning your calls. You people are just rude.” She tried to cross her arms around the cuffs for a few seconds before finding a reasonable facsimile of the position and then scowled at him.

Fury suddenly touched his comm and frowned. Coulson sat up slightly straighter, his eyes on the director. Lucy cast about for an opening. _This might be it, bros. Sayonara, see you later, so long and go fuck yourselves_.

She hissed and doubled over as a lance of pain like a lightning bolt shot along her belly, sluicing down open nerves and sending bursts of color across the back of her eyelids. She clamped down on it and bit back the white-hot rage abruptly firing her blood. She barely registered Coulson’s hand on her shoulder. Whether he was trying to prop her back up or shake a response out of her, she didn’t know. 

_Bitchcakes. She was just waiting for us to leave_ , she thought, seething. She was distantly aware of another strike, and Thor’s pain.

“Are you all right?” Coulson demanded, shaking her again.

_Yes. No. Yes._ No. _Fuck fuck fuck. Don’t get involved. Let the aliens fight it out. It would be easier, wouldn’t it? Nothing to worry about if they’ve pulverized each other..._ She could feel a blast of cold wash over him, and she gritted her teeth.

“Hey, Fury,” she called, uncurling with some difficulty. _No, no, shut up, just let it ride_. He looked at her, his eye glinting. “Your momma’s so bad a operational security, she lost her clearance twice!”

_Well, that’s it then. Might as well bite the bullet. Sorry, better instincts. I’ll listen to you next time, I promise_. Fury snarled, Coulson jumped when one of the open cuffs clamped down on his wrist, the other wrapping neatly around the railing next to him. She flexed her hands and waved at them. They all started when she dissolved into smoke and then was gone.

“Suck on that one, douchebags,” she muttered to herself, sliding back into reality out of a dark shadow in one of the medical facility’s exam rooms. She could hear yelling further down the corridor, and, carrying over the din, a woman laughing bitterly. _Great_. Still, she felt calmer and more collected than she had in days, now that there was a real fight to be had.

Lucy made a small beckoning gesture, and her brass knuckles blinked into existence in her hand. The quarters were too close to do anything really dramatic without worrying about collateral damage, and, close as she was, she still couldn’t get a fix on Amora. She frowned. Given Romanoff’s warning that they didn’t lose one of their own often, anything overly permanent might not go over too well with the rest of the party, anyway. She slipped the knuckledusters into her pocket and and moved forward, keeping low until she could get a better look at the situation. 

The tall blonde sorceress from the files was towering over Thor, her hands on her hips. The prince was half collapsed on the ground, clutching his side, and everyone else was pressed flat to the floor, struggling against a force she couldn’t see but could feel humming like an electrical field. Amora stepped forward, and there was a slight shimmer of power around her for the briefest moment. _A forcefield_ , Lucy thought. Sif looked like she’d almost, but not quite, gotten between the two of them in time. _Fat lot of good my runes are going to do you if you won’t stay in the fucking room, you guys,_ she grumbled to herself.

“How many more companions will you sacrifice before you see reason, my love?” Amora asked sadly, leaning down to stroke Thor’s beard. He caught her hand clumsily and shook his head with a great effort.

“I won’t yield to you, Amora. This is not meant to be. Give up this madness.”

“I had wished to avoid this, dearest, but you leave me little choice.” Her right hand began to glow with a cold white light. 

Lucy rolled her eyes. _Office romances have no place in magic, lady._ She spotted an overturned chair and suppressed a sigh. So much for trying for something better.

“Farewell, my love,” Amora murmured.

“No!” Sif pleaded. “Amora, don’t do this. Please. It’s not too late.”

“Of course it is, my fair rival. But I can offer you the small mercy of preceding him to Valhalla, if you like.”

“You have me, Amora. Let them go,” Thor managed, his features spasming in pain.

Lucy darted out, grabbed the chair, and swung it into Amora’s back with as much force as she could gather. “I heard you like Nickelback!”

The sorceress went flying, crashed halfway through a wall, and fell to her hands and knees in the rubble, gasping.

“And give back my ring!” she called after her. 

“Down!” One of Sif’s feet caught her behind her right knee, toppling her.

“What the fucking _fuck_ , Sif?”

An axe the size of a serving platter whistled through the air where her head had been. She rolled and scrambled to her feet, backing up hastily. The axe was being handled by a bald man almost as big as Thor.

“Who the fuck are you?” Lucy demanded, retreating carefully. Sending Amora through the wall had lessened the effect of her spell on everyone else, but it hadn’t eliminated it. Thor pushed himself up a few more inches, struggling with the field’s grip.

“Run,” he growled. “Please, Loki, just run!”

The Asgardian with the axe advanced on her as Amora began to pull herself upright.

“I am Skurge, also called the Executioner,” he said evenly, bringing the axe up for an experimental swing at her. She jumped back, her eyes on him. The smile he gave her was almost warm, and she felt her skin crawl.

“And you’re with Amora, huh?”

“Her enemies are my enemies.”

“Yeah? That seems a little like cheating to me.”

“Loki, by the Nine, please listen to me! Run!” Thor begged her.

Amora coughed and spit, a hard smile splitting her face. “I prefer to think of it as being prepared, you Midgardian cur. You will pay for this interference in the affairs of your betters.”

“I do have to say, being prepared is vital to any reasonable offensive maneuver.” Lucy fished a folded-up piece of paper out of her bra and fell back another step. She flipped the paper open, pointed it at Skurge, and hissed, “ _Your master was beaten by a pack of syphilitic, illiterate, donkey-fucking Spanish peasants!_ ”

A seemingly endless, dark cloud of insects boiled from the paper with a roar. The first of the mass slammed into Skurge’s face with a deafening, buzzing cacophony, forcing him back and blinding him. He howled, the cry choked off almost immediately by the mass. The swarm resolved into an almost human figure, its hands tearing at the Executioner and its torso pressing him back.

“Holy _shit_! Jones, did you just summon a demon?” van Dyne shouted over the echoing roar.

“No! Well, not technically. I guess maybe you could make the argument that it falls under the same category, but it’s more of a golem. Just _don’t get in its way_ ,” Lucy yelled back, ducking as Amora threw a knife at her. The blade’s edge caught her back, splitting the fabric of her shirt and opening a long, shallow cut along her shoulder blade. She ground her teeth as a strangely acidic sort of pain blossomed from the wound.

“How are you even _here_?” Stark called, leveraging himself into something close to a sitting position. “How do you have your powers back?”

“Funny story. It turns out I just needed to believe in myself,” Lucy shouted. “The power was really in me all along! It’s a very heartwarming and inspirational story!”

Skurge swung his axe wildly at the mass of cicadas, breaking down half a wall. Lucy banked a quick shot of energy off the window she’d set up as a mirror, landing a solid hit in the small of his back. Skurge lurched forward and fell, trying desperately to clear his face long enough to see where he was going. Amora began muttering a spell, and Lucy darted out of the way, hissing as the movement caused her shoulder to burn.

“Eat eldritch horror, you low-rent knife-thrower!” she snarled. She gestured sharply, and Amora was suddenly covered in whip scorpions. The enchantress paused, got a good look at one, and then shrieked and began swatting at them frantically. They clung desperately, flattening themselves against her and trying to burrow into the folds of her dress. She managed to send a pair flying across the room, where they landed on Stark.

“A little help, Jones?” he yelped, flailing at them. “Jones, your little monsters are crawling in my hair! One of them has its feet in my ear! Jones, do something! It has its _feet_ in my _ear_!”

Lucy pushed her brass knuckles on and tackled the sorceress, landing a solid punch on her jaw. The energy field she could sense wrapping around the sorceress like a shell cracked, and she could feel the energy racing along her nerves as it broke apart. She was extraordinarily grateful she’d had the forethought to spend some time enchanting the weapon when she’d first got it. Trying to use an object as a focus mid-fight was usually a lost cause.

Skurge’s angry roar grew louder, and Amora screamed, clutching her face. Everyone else began pulling themselves to their feet, scrambling for purchase as her spell faded. Amora hissed at her, her eyes bright with rage and pain, and then struck back, her fingers crooked into claws as she reached for Lucy’s eyes. Lucy lunged forward and twisted, hooking one arm around Amora’s waist and the other under her knee. Amora clipped the side of her face with an elbow, then reached back to dig her nails into Lucy’s back and neck.

“Motherfucker!” Lucy cried out in pain as two of them found the shallow knife-wound and clawed it open. _Fuck, this is going to hurt even more._ She lifted and threw herself backwards, taking the Asgardian down over her shoulder. Amora groaned and brought her arms up over her face as Lucy rolled free. Lucy pulled her to her knees by the front of her gown.

“My ring,” she growled. Amora scrabbled at a pouch on her belt and shoved it at her. Lucy dropped her again and opened it carefully. She upended it onto her palm as two of the Asgardian guards seized the sorceress. She slipped it onto her finger and held it up. “At last, my arm is complete again.”*

“Oh, that’s ominous,” Stark coughed, staggering to his feet and scrubbing at his scalp and neck with his hands. He looked around wildly, trying to find the whip scorpions.

“Relax. If I was really into slitting throats and cannibalism, I think you’d have noticed by now,” Lucy scoffed. She whistled at the insect golem. “ _I declare your lands mine by right of conquest!_ ”

It howled and surged toward her. She opened a portal directly in front of it, siphoning it back to the dim rain forest temple from whence she’d summoned it. The paper flickered and burned where it had fallen to the floor. Lucy grimaced and rolled her shoulder, the open wound stinging and refusing to close easily. “Were those fucking knives enchanted or something?”

“Probably. Most of her weapons are,” Sif replied. 

“My spells are beyond your ken,” the sorceress growled around her swollen jaw, glaring at Lucy.

Sif crouched next to Thor and looped one of his arms around her shoulders. The two healers helped her get him to his feet. She looked up and met Lucy’s eyes briefly. “Thank you. For your help.”

“Right back at you,” Lucy said grudgingly.

“Am I going to die? One of your eldritch horrors stung me,” Stark complained. Amora’s face stilled, and she looked at a few suspect scratches on her arms and moving bulges on her clothes.

“Neat trick, considering they don’t have stingers. They’re just whip scorpions, Stark,” she snorted. She caught Amora’s expression. “Easy does it, hot stuff. They’re not actually eldritch horrors. I mean, yes, they’re hideous, but they’re harmless. It seemed a little inadvisable to summon anything venomous right now. Come here, you ugly bastards.”

“Jones,” Romanoff said tightly, swallowing. Lucy’s brows furrowed at the sight of the spy’s gun. She gathered the arachnids and carefully folded reality around them, sending them back to the individual locations she’d pulled them from.

“Seriously? All that, and you’re pointing a _gun_ at me? Hope springs eternal, huh?”

“Coulson.” It wasn’t a question.

“Is fine. And probably on his way back here. I assume you got at least something of a distress call through? Fury looked even more upset than usual before I left. Speaking of which, when he gets here, would you do me a favor? Tell him I totally meant what I said about his mom.”

Romanoff considered her for a moment, then holstered the pistol.

“You didn’t hear the message? Why did you come back, then?” Stark asked, rubbing his arm. “One of them _did_ bite me.”

“Suck it up,” Lucy told him. She tried again to get the wound on her shoulder to close. The itching, stinging sensation prickling through the torn flesh intensified for a moment as her power met with a faint, odd resistance at the edges of the laceration. She frowned and gave up for the time being. It wasn’t serious, and she could deal with it once she was in private again. “Anyway, I go through that much fucking effort to resurrect a dude? He’s not pulling a reverse-Jesus and keeling over three days later unless he owes me money. Besides which, Susie Goodtimes here had my fucking ring.”

Stark pursed his lips and cast a deliberate, pointed looked around the half-destroyed room. “The ring you really don’t need?”

“I really don’t need a lot of stuff. Doesn’t mean I’m cool with somebody else stealing it.” She rolled her eyes at him.

Amora glowered at her haughtily. “A mongrel like you could never hope to tap the true potential of Loki’s soul. I was studying it to release him.”

“Do go on,” Lucy invited. 

“You got it out of a cereal box, didn’t you?” Stark sighed.

“Pawn shop in Wichita.”

“Do you have _any idea_ how long I spent analyzing that stupid thing?” he whined.

“Yup. I have to say, it was worth every penny just for that.” Lucy smiled thinly at him. “I bet you even had to look thoughtful and considerate and nod along while Richards asked a bunch of stupid questions about the last time you calibrated your equipment and whether or not you’d tried all the bog-standard stuff you did before you even got back to headquarters.”

“I hate you.”

“You know how I just saved your life? You’re welco _ow_!” She jerked away from the sudden pressure on the cut on her back. “What the fucking _fuck_ , Sif?”

“Stop being such a child and hold still,” Sif scolded. “You’re bleeding.”

“Not much, and if I wanted one of you people poking at it, I’d have asked you to,” Lucy protested, trying unsuccessfully to twist out of Sif’s grip. “Holy mother of drunks and junkies, I’ve met virus-infested assembly-line robots with a gentler touch. Stop that. Shouldn’t you be hovering over Thor?”

“I will be fine,” Thor rumbled from across the room. “Thanks to you.”

Amora muttered something uncomplimentary under her breath.

“For fuck’s sake, don’t start that again,” Lucy told him. “Saving you on a brief whim doesn’t translate into an enduring interest in your well-being.”

Skurge threw Fandral across the room and began getting to his feet. 

“Oh, come on,” Lucy grunted, then snapped her fingers. The Executioner and Amora vanished.

“Where...?” Pym yelped, startled.

“The pocket dimension where lost luggage winds up. It’s not that hard to do, but I didn’t think I’d need to. Have Strange come dredge them back out whenever you’re ready to pack them off to Asgard,” Lucy said. “ _Will you fucking stop that_?” She finally broke away from Sif. “If I need to, I’ll just get stitches like a normal goddamned human being. Stop fussing over it.”

Sif crossed her arms, her face stern. “You are wounded. Let me tend to it.”

“I’ve had worse from angry cats. Go supervise somebody from your own planet,” Lucy retorted. 

“What was that thing you summoned?” Romanoff looked up from where she was checking a cut on van Dyne’s scalp and Stark was trying unsuccessfully to convince her to look at his arm. “And why is your tattoo moving?”

“Ancient guardian created by a dead god to guard its now-defunct holdings. You guys should probably stay out of Belize for a while. That’s the first good fight it’s managed to have in something like two hundred years, and I don’t think he really considers that a proper finish. And I don’t know why my tattoo is moving. Are you sure it’s moving and you don’t just have a head injury?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. Is it a full moon?” _Weird reaction to Amora’s magic, that_.

“I don’t think so.”

“Then absolutely no fucking clue.” Lucy glanced around. Sif was still trying to glower her into submission. Everyone else looked little worse for wear, all things considered. Thor was ashen and clutching his side, but the healers seemed relieved to finally have an injury with a physical manifestation to work on. Even Amora and Skurge had gotten out of it without anything Amora’s magic couldn’t take care of, so far as she’d seen. “Maybe it’s letting me know it’s time to go o’clock.”

“No,” Thor said firmly.

“I’m not going to stand here and argue with you about it, Thor.”

“I’m not letting you leave again,” he told her. “It was a mistake the first time.”

“Dude, you can’t actually stop me,” Lucy reminded him.

“I _chose_ not to stop you before,” Thor countered, getting to his feet. The guards shifted uncomfortably, and his companions glanced from her to him.

“Thor,” Sif began.

“A, you should sit down before you fall down. I get that you’re a noble warrior who won’t let physical impairment get in the way of whatever duty you’re pursuing at any given time, but seriously, you are not looking so hot right now. B, you chose not to stop Coulson. I assure you, stopping _me_ is a very, very different prospect.” Lucy shot him her most sincere smile. “C, _arrivederci_ , bitches.”

She vanished, ducking into a shadow and stepping out of another in downtown Dallas. The black lines of the ouroboros faded to nothing, and she stretched back into her true form. It felt glorious. She looked down at her chest with a small pang. “Alas, poor DDs, I knew you well.”

It was a much simpler thing to root out the remnants of Amora’s magic and heal her back without her own magic interfering or clumsy aliens badgering her. The skin reknit along the broken seam, smoothing back into its normal texture. She ran her hands over the now ridiculously loose and short SHIELD-issue clothes, turning the sweatpants into jeans and the t-shirt into a sleeveless blouse. Coulson never had found her a pair of shoes, so the motorcycle boots had to be made from scratch. Lucy stretched again, enjoying the familiar feel of her own dimensions, juts and angles and sharp lines and all, and started walking. 

She flexed her fingers and moved as if to grasp something from thin air. Her grandmother’s lighter, her cigarettes, and her tequila-filled rum bottle settled into her hands. She put the first two away and opened the third. With any luck, Coulson would come through on the last thing she’d asked for. She’d pulled Thor out of the underworld right enough; if he welched on the payment, she was obliged to lean on him about it. And, of course, it would be nice if she could finally prompt Mariana to move the fuck on and let it the fuck go. Maybe then she’d be able to dig out the hooks still sunk deep in her own flesh, erase the scars, and start forgetting about it. Something to put on the list for after she was done with Mimir and le Fay. Right now, she wanted to get drunk and dance with a pretty woman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Sondheim, Stephen. _Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street_. Act I, “My Friends.”


	19. Chapter 19

Lucy arched her neck and squinted at the top of the oak. The cold wind whipping through the late afternoon sky cut through her light coat but didn’t chill her. She hugged herself anyway, irritated at her own sudden reluctance to confront the disarticulated head stuck in the uppermost branches. Thor and the other Asgardians had left the planet days ago, taking Amora and Skurge with them. She’d felt it distantly when the Bifrost had opened, with the approximate effect of an ice shelf breaking away from a far-off glacier and plunging into the ocean. She been ignoring Coulson’s calls for even longer. Either her persistent refusal to pick up or her new voicemail greeting being "Why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying fuck at the mooooooooooooon?"* had prompted him to start texting her variants of “Stop ignoring my calls” and “Answer your damn phone” every six hours. She had no intention of doing either any time soon.

She sighed and started drifting upwards. There was no sense prolonging her moment of indecision. The thick, dark trunk served as her guidepost, its bark beginning to blacken and gnarl the closer she got to the dead god.

“Mimir,” she growled as she came level with him. Lucy stepped backward onto a limb and rested there, leaning against the trunk. The breeze made the tree sway slightly, the pendulous motion reminding her of a ship’s in rough seas.

“Son of Odin,” Mimir laughed.

“Ha fucking ha,” she said flatly. “You have an explanation for this whole fucking thing that won’t get you a spot on the next Voyager mission? Because if you do, now would really be the time to bust it out.”

“You will do as you will do. No paltry words of mine will sway you from whatever course you’ve already settled on,” he said smugly. “You may expect no special pleading from me.”

“I’ll take that to mean that you saw me and immediately leaped to the same conclusion as the rest of those dumbasses. You know, just because I _look like_ someone doesn’t mean I _am_ someone.”

The head snorted, a soft grunting sound without the force of a pair of lungs behind it. “I saw your descent to this world some decades ago, child. You were nothing more than a bit of Asgard’s jetsam, funneled here by the destruction of the Bifrost and caught in this world’s spiritual gravity. Shall I tell you of your unwitting plunge into the underworld and your insensible wanderings there? Shall I speak of your mother, so desperate for a child, any child at all? Or perhaps your grandfather, and the wisewoman he went to, and his timid turn back to the old ways in the hopes of quickening his daughter’s womb? Would you prefer to hear of the viper nursed at a queen’s breast in a golden hall, or the favor wheedled from half-forgotten Midgardian gods with fermented agave sap and hen’s blood?”

Lucy crossed her arms and glared at him. “You done?”

“I will never be done observing,” he returned. “For instance, I now observe a petulant child looking to lash out.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself,” she growled. _I am a_ great magician _looking to lash out_. “You’re telling me that you’re for real with Thor being my brother.”

“Of course he is not your brother. As you so accurately stated a brief time ago, there is no bond of kinship. You were never of the same blood, even as he remembers you. And here? You share nothing. Were you raised by the same parents? No. In the same household? No. Yours is not even the familiarity of children sharing tutors and armsmasters and the occasional laden table after a hunt. You are nothing to Asgard. The proper state of affairs has been restored.”

“Hooray,” Lucy said flatly. “So you were just jerking me around, basically. He didn’t need that stupid apple.”

“I serve the House of Odin, now and forever. The true heir of Asgard did not need an apple. The true heir of Asgard needed a native magician possessing the power to harrow the underworld and lacking the capacity to reflect on whether or not harrowing the underworld would be a good idea.”

“Thor wouldn’t have ended up in the underworld if you hadn’t sent me in with that fucking apple,” she pointed out.

“Of course he would have. Amora’s frustrated passion has been germinating in the dark recesses of her barren heart for far longer than _you_ ,” he practically spat the word, “have been alive.”

“And you couldn’t have bribed someone else into taking care of him?”

“Potentially.” His eyes narrowed. “Fortunately, your hunger for absolution and, more to the point, your pathetic desire that it be had _cheaply_ meant that I didn’t have to.”

Lucy stiffened, rage howling through her veins. She could practically see the fire building behind her eyes. _So this is what it’s like to be at the epicenter of an atomic blast_ , part of her thought.

“You deny the truth of my words?”

“May you be stuck in this tree another thousand years,” she said coldly. _May the first curse I actually mean stick_. She turned and tugged at the fabric of reality, wishing herself anywhere but in his presence. Anywhere her incipient loss of control wouldn’t turn civilization into a smoking crater.

She found herself on a familiar beach and relaxed slightly. _And here we go. This is more like it. Good morning, Fernandina Island._ A swarm of iguanas eyed her crossly. Lucy closed her eyes and spread her hands, feeling the living core of the planet pulsing below them.

“Let’s give the geologists something to write home about, huh?” she said, her voice tight and biting and harsh even in her own words.

“Leave us out of this,” one of the iguanas hissed, slithering away.

Far below them, the sea surged and boiled as the submerged volcanoes churned to sudden life. Fuck Mimir. Fuck Asgard. Fuck SHIELD. Fuck le Fay and her fucking boyfriend. Fuck _everything_. She let her power flow and burn. It was like taking her heart in her hand, feeling the rhythmic beat of it, the ecstasy of life. The mantle flowed inside the thin shell of the planet, the raw energy whorling and eddying. She let it crackle upwards into her hands and then back down through the water and lava and stone. By the time she felt close to spent, two new islands had broken the surface of the water to the west of them. She surveyed her handiwork and nodded to herself, then lowered herself to the sun-warm ground. She was almost-- _almost_ \--tired. 

Fucking Mimir and his cheap shot about cheap absolution. So she had a lot on her conscience. So she occasionally did stupid things to try to soothe it. At least she had the sense not to go chasing after people who’d tried to kill her, or enrage her one ticket back home from Iceland, or keep calling people for weeks, or, or, or....She sputtered to a halt. _Trust parrots_ , she thought. _I also know better than to trust parrots. Or stick around after insulting Fury’s mother_. Her eyes swept out over the rock slipping ever so slightly out of the sea where nothing had shown before.

“Better than a good fight,” she muttered, pushing her windswept hair out of her face.

“Please don’t start singing,” an iguana huffed, crawling past her into the ocean. “It draws the hawks.”

“Oh, it fucking does not. The hawks are just _there_ ,” Lucy retorted.

“They mistake it for the feeding cries of their young,” a second hissed.

“You should go see Neil instead of singing,” a third murmured, scrambling over the rocks.

“Yes. Go see Neil. She is lonely. Do not sing,” a fourth panted, walking stiffly past her toward the basking congregation. “It draws the hawks.”

“I told her that,” the first one grated. “She does not believe us.”

“Fuck off, you hypercritical little bastards. My singing voice is _lovely_. And I’m not going to see Neil. She’s just going to ask me to bring back her people again, and....” She trailed off, the spark of an idea lighting in her brain. “And I am _really_ fucking mad at a guy who I’m pretty sure has a time machine. Well, I’ll be damned.” She grinned. “I’m gonna go talk to Neil.”

She cast about until she found the tortoise.

“Hey, Neil, how’s tricks?” she asked, stepping out of a puff of smoke on the other side of the island.

“Miss Lucy,” the tortoise greeted her. “I am well-fed, and I have no companions. Life is merely existence.”

“About that...I think I may have an idea.”

“Do you? Will you help me?”

“When was the last time you had more than fifty other tortoises running around?”

“It was five years before we first met,” the tortoise sighed, lifting her head.

“What?”

“You appeared to me, said ‘Hey, Neil,’ and then vanished again. It is how I came by my name.” Lucy blinked at her. “You do not recall this?”

“Uh...huh. Did I seem really drunk?”

“No, you appeared perfectly sober.”

“Then I think I don’t remember it because it hasn’t happened yet. For me, I mean. And it looks like I succeed.” Lucy frowned. “Good to know, I guess. When was that?”

“The sailors called it the year of 1899.”

“So a side-trip to there, then back to 1894. I’m gonna go see what I can do, Neil.”

“Thank you, Miss Lucy.”

*****

Natasha rapped her knuckles on the table sharply. “I’m sorry, Tony, are we boring you?”

He looked up from the tablet he’d been doodling on and sighed. Steve glanced at the screen, registered the rough design of a crown of antlers, and shook his head. “If I say yes, will this meeting get any _less_ boring?”

“Not likely,” she growled.

“Then no, of course you’re not boring me, Nat. This is all fascinating. I care deeply and intently about Doom’s castle getting turned into slag, especially since he’s not yelling about any of us doing it or setting the Baxter Building on fire or threatening to nuke a friendly country in retaliation. I can’t think of anything better to do with my time than listen to a run-down of SHIELD’s non-reports about what we don’t know and, frankly, don’t _need_ to know, since this doesn’t sound like an Avengers problem, anyway.”

“It could turn into one pretty damn quickly, Tony,” Steve said. “Did you not read Jones’s updated file after she escaped?”

“No, why would I?” Tony grumbled, closing his sketch and putting the computer down. 

Steve shot him a disbelieving look. Hank rubbed his eyes, and Clint threw up his hands.

“I don’t know, Tony, why _would_ you read the updated file on the fire-wizard who probably has a huge grudge against us now?” Clint demanded.

“Wait, fire-wizard? As in, ‘she just melted Doom’s ancestral home into magma’ fire-wizard?”

“So it seems reasonable to extrapolate,” Natasha confirmed. “It’s at least a strong possibility.”

“Uh, there wasn’t anything in the file about her coming back and melting _us_ into magma, was there?”

“No,” Bruce said firmly. “But I don’t think we can exactly exclude that, either.”

“Well, she wasn’t really depowered, and she didn’t set anyone on fire at the time, right? Maybe we can?” he asked hopefully. “I know she wasn’t exactly all about hugging it out or anything, but none of _us_ got hit with a chair and accused of being closet Nickelback fans.”

“She’s capricious, Tony,” Jan said. “Not to mention, I’d be pretty mad at us, if I were in her shoes.”

“You’re pretty mad at us just in general, Jan. I don’t think you’re really a predictive model for anyone but you.”

Natasha held up a hand, and they all fell silent. She tapped a few buttons, and the projector switched to a CNN feed of the Kremlin.

“Richards thinks that burning wreckage in the middle of the Red Square used to be Doom’s time machine.”

“Richards thinks a lot of things,” Tony said sourly. 

Natasha glared at him. “This is a little bit more actionable than most of the things Richards thinks.”

“Do we have any video of whoever put it there?” Hank groaned.

“I hate time machines,” Jan muttered darkly.

“Everybody hates time machines,” Steve sighed.

Natasha pulled up a video. “Shot by a tourist. Reed says the crab legs aren’t original design. He only saw it once, but it was a stationary platform.”

“Those look a lot like an AIM prototype I blew to smithereens a few years back,” Tony offered. “Have they been hit, too?”

“If they have, we haven’t heard about it yet.”

The machine on-screen shut down unceremoniously, crumpling to the pavement as its sole occupant jumped clear. A sharp gesture from her, and the whole rig burst into flame and began billowing acrid-looking smoke. Tall, thin, dressed in a fitted coat and an elegant suit, long dark hair streaming free in the wind....Tony frowned. “What’s that under her arm?”

Natasha zoomed in until the image’s integrity began to deteriorate.

“Does that look like a, uh, a _dodo_ to anyone else?” Bruce asked, pushing his glasses back up.

Tony squinted at it. “It looks more like an emu and a kakapo had a family-planning failure.”

“That’s what dodos looked like, Tony,” Jan snapped. She scowled. “Man, I’ve wanted a dodo since I was in grade school. I bet she just grabbed it on impulse.”

“Maybe if we catch her in the next twenty-four hours, you can make the case to Fury why it shouldn’t be seized as evidence,” Clint suggested. “Or Hank can clone it or something.”

Jan arched an eyebrow at Hank, who look at Clint in exasperation.

“Don’t we have her phone number?” Steve asked, shaking his head at the three of them. “Can’t we just, uh, _call her_ or something?”

“Technically yes, but she’s not picking up,” Natasha told him. “Coulson’s been trying to raise her since she steamrolled Amora and Skurge.”

“Have we tried tracing it?” Steve asked. Tony snorted.

“She’s been able to jam traces, wiretaps, and everything else we’ve come up with since day one,” he explained. “According to our surveillance data, the phone never leaves the ladies’ room at McMurdo Station, where it’s constantly streaming Spanish-language children’s programming.”

“I still don’t see how that’s possible,” Hank grumbled.

“I don’t see how it’s possible that there’s an actual sub-dimension where luggage goes when the airlines lose it, but that’s where Strange found our two Asgardian pains in the ass,” Tony pointed out.

“Has anyone who isn’t Agent Coulson tried calling her?” Steve suggested. “You know, in case she’s just really mad at _him_?”

“Coulson has tried calling from a variety of different numbers, including one that’s still officially registered to an old associate of hers,” Natasha said icily.

“I think Steve’s volunteering, Nat,” Clint chuckled.

“Offer accepted, then,” she grunted. “Keep your suits handy, people. This probably doesn’t end with one flaming time machine dumped in Moscow. Tony, Hank, Bruce--I’ll want you three working with Richards once our recovery team has what’s left of that thing back stateside. Steve, with me.”

Clint grinned, and Steve rolled his eyes at him as he reluctantly got up to follow Natasha into her office.

*****

Lucy slid out of a portal and onto a beach, startling a few of the closer sunbathers. A few others looked askance at her inappropriate-for-the-occasion clothing, and one was frowning intently at the dodo lodged firmly in her arms. The bird hissed at him, and she grinned.

“Home again, home again,” Lucy crowed. A tiny white clapboard house appeared a few yards back from the beach. She hoisted the dodo over the low split-rail fence and into the small backyard, then tossed her coat over the porch swing. It smelled of burnt electronics, guano, and turtle. She kicked her boots off and wiggled her toes. 

_That took a lot longer than anticipated_ , she thought. Probably because she’d stopped to completely trash Doom’s house. Once she’d spent more than half an hour just trying to locate the damned time machine, it seemed silly not to do something destructive while she was there. _If I ever get a base that big, I’m installing mall maps in strategic locations._

And of course, she’d stopped to pick up a bunch of strays on the way to get Neil’s crew back from the nineteenth century boneyard. There hadn’t been any sign of Morgan, but there was time for that later. She had an angry extinct bird in her backyard and a herd of no-longer-extinct tortoises stampeding across Fernandina. She’d even turned Neil young again for good measure. There was something about happy tortoises that made her feel like cackling.

The door swung open to admit her, and she tossed her jacket and overshirt onto a recliner. She filled an old tumbler with ice and vodka, then made her way back outside. The dodo had predictably slipped back out under the railing and was menacing everyone willing to make eye contact with it. She shooed her into the yard again and went back for a bunch of bananas. The bird tore into them and seemed content to stay put for a few minutes. Lucy stretched and sipped her drink.

“You need a name, don’t you?” she asked. The bird hissed and moved to get between her and the fruit. “And you’re kind of an asshole. How would you like to be an Elizabeth?” The dodo ignored her. “Elizabeth it is, then. You can be Mayor of Birdtown.”

She settled onto the swing. Everyone on the beach had decided it was safer to pretend she didn’t exist. Neil was happy again. There was a pack of confused Tasmanian tigers wandering around Australia, a flock of radicalized great auks tearing around London, a rookery of smug little rockhoppers in Greenland, because why not? And, of course, her own personal house-dodo. It almost made up for the fact that Thor really was her fucking brother. _Only_ , she thought, _not really_. There was still no blood between them, and nothing else, either. 

Well, nothing but her having saved his life twice, which was rather something, and he probably knew it. She sighed and rubbed her face. _Maybe it doesn’t count as much when it’s the prince you’re saving_ , she reasoned. _Maybe that’s just how things happen there. I’ll get a nice hand-written letter from the queen thanking me for doing my monarchical duty to the blood of the throne_.

Lucy stared out across the sea, her gaze occasionally drawn by jumping fish. If Mimir had thought to shock her with an intimation about her grandfather and the wisewoman, he’d failed. The old shaman who’d packed her and Pilar off to Xibalba* had muttered something along the same lines, that her birth had not been a strictly natural thing. There had been no explicit discussion of it in her family, of course. She’d been far too young, and she strongly suspected that, whatever her grandfather had done, he’d never revealed it to his wife or daughter. She frowned. He’d never revealed it to her mother, certainly. Her aunt, though....Lucy shook herself. Of course not. He wouldn’t have told any of them. He’d gone scurrying back to the church that had failed him time and again before she’d been old enough to recognize anything else in him. He’d probably died convinced that nothing had come of his brief departure from the straight and narrow. Her aunt had doubtless made the leap on her own through a combination of the confusing visions that had plagued her throughout her entire adult life and simple cunning.

Her phone chimed. Another text from Coulson. She ignored it.

It was a shame Thor was so likeable when he wasn’t trying to guilt her into...whatever it was he was trying to guilt her into. It made pushing him away harder than it needed to be. There wasn’t anything else for it, though. He didn’t want _her_. He wanted his brother back. It would have been easier if Mimir had told her that he’d simply duped her into helping with a convenient lie. She could have shaken him until he’d coughed up Loki’s whereabouts and then sent the thunder god haring off after him, no longer her problem. Everybody would have been happy, or at least unhappy in a way she didn’t have to care about, out of her sight, and unlikely to make it her problem again in the near future. 

Lucy sucked on a piece of ice, frowning. It wouldn’t be terribly hard to manufacture an illusion and send it skating through some nearby realm. If he never got close enough to speak to it, he’d be fooled. It would be cruel, but she’d be off the hook. She dismissed the idea after a moment. He deserved better. Eventually he would figure things out for himself. She wasn’t his brother. She was never going to be his brother. He seemed spectacularly stubborn, but not quite as dim as all that. It might take a year or two, but he’d give up, get back to properly mourning, and go home. They might suffer losses rarely, but they did suffer them; he’d survive it. It might be unpleasant, but it would be a normal process.

She set her drink down on the deck and wandered back to the house to retrieve her box of stationery. The form letters were, she decided, the best idea she’d ever had. A few check-marks, a few filled-in blanks, a quick signature, and she was done. Her collateral damage were given to understand from the informal nature of the apologies that it was nothing personal, her enemies were given to understand from the casual nature of the letter that they were almost beneath her notice, and her temporary colleagues were acknowledged, but not in a way that promised further cooperation or undue attachment. She returned to find the dodo trying to fit her beak in the glass.

Her phone rang. _Not Coulson_. Lucy sighed and swatted the bird away from her drink. “Jones here.”

“Lucy Jones?” a young woman asked.

“Speaking.” Check: sincere, check: apology, circle: unwilling accomplice, ‘commandeering your cyclotron at gunpoint,’ check: one-time event, check: exceeded my expectations, check: therapy, check: sincerely, signature, date.

“May I interest you in a discount rate on firearms, ammunition, and/or explosives today?” she chirped.

“Beg your pardon?”

“I’m sorry,” the woman said, sounding genuinely apologetic. “I am speaking to Lucy Jones, yes?”

“Yes, you are. Who is this?” Lucy asked, her brow furrowing. Check: sincere, check: apology, circle: innocent bystander, ‘corpsing-up your hotel room,’ check: one-time event, check: was already broken, check: small claims court, check: sincerely, signature, date.

“This is Melinda, calling on behalf of the ATF. I’m authorized to offer you discounts of up to forty percent off wholesale on--”

“Okay, Melinda, here’s the thing. I’m a magician. I don’t really go in for munitions on a large scale.” Check: court-ordered, check: apology, circle: hated opponent, ‘ruining your box social,’ check: repeat performance, check: blessed relief, check: hell, check: go fuck yourself, signature, date.

“Are you sure you’re not in the market for something? According to our files, you’ve gone through rather a lot of large-caliber ammunition and your fair share of small arms in the past few months.”

“The past few months have been extremely anomalous, I assure you. I usually do things more along the lines of sticking porno-’staches on Spider-Man’s mask when he interferes with a bank heist.”

“You...stuck...a ‘70s moustache on Spider-Man’s mask.” Melinda’s cheery demeanor slipped slightly.

“Yes.”

“Spider-Man. As in, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.” She was sounding definitely disapproving now.

“Does whatever a spider can, yes.”

“That’s terrible.”

“He didn’t notice for a week.”

“ _That’s terrible_.”

“Lady, not to point fingers, but you’re cold-calling me trying to sell me murder weapons. And you’re openly mocking the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.”

“No, ma’am. I’m with the ATF. The Seized Armament Disposal Division, to be specific. And we leave judgement for how you choose to exercise your Second Amendment rights post-purchase to the courts.”

“You’re _with_ the ATF,” Lucy repeated, draining her drink. There were times, she thought, when life was truly glorious.

“We have to make budget somehow, ma’am. Resale of seized or decommissioned weaponry has proven the most efficient method. Are you still at 1259 Delacroix Avenue? I can send you some introductory brochures and a few catalogs. We offer an extremely attractive shipping rate to first-time customers.”

“I’ve never been at that address. Did you get my file from SHIELD?”

“Let me check. Just one second.” Lucy could hear Melinda typing away on the other end of the line. “Yes, our profile did originate with SHIELD. Is it inaccurate?”

“As hell. They have me conflated with a different Lucy Jones.” She had the brief mental image of some suburban administrative assistant in Kansas getting a slew of horrific unsolicited mailers from various nefarious agencies looking to move product and provide services. “Tell you what, do you guys sell bazookas?”

“RPGs or classic bazookas?”

“Classic. I like to have them around in case I need to prove a point. It’s not like I really go through a lot of them, though, so just one case should do. Oh, and a Reaper. Could I get a Reaper?”

“An MQ-9?”

“Yeah.”

“With or without payload?”

“Without. I bring my own payload.”

The sharp plastic clacking grew faster for a moment, then stopped. “We have two in stock, but if you need more, we could requisition another dozen from the Department of Energy.”

“As delighted as I am by the Department of Energy being equipped with Reaper drones, I think two’s plenty for me.”

“Where would you like them delivered?”

“Um, let’s see....My base doesn’t technically exist most of the time. Why don’t you just dump them on the west side of Eglin AFB and send up a flare when they’re ready. You guys take cash payments?”

“We’re cash-only, ma’am.”

“Good to know. What’s the damage?”

More typing. Melinda told her.

“Brigham Young’s fancy beard, you weren’t fucking kidding about that discount. Okay, Melinda, can you close your eyes for a second? Great.” She snapped her fingers. “Now open them again. Yeah, that was me. When will the payment be processed?”

“Uh, forty-eight hours, ma’am. I apologize, we don’t get much business from magicians.”

“I have a weakness for fancy toys that most of my cohort doesn’t share. I don’t suppose the DEA is also trying to make budget by means of direct marketing?”

“I wouldn’t know, ma’am. I suspect their direct marketing is a little more, uh, _direct_ than ours is, just due to the nature of the product.”

“Now, if I want to place another order, would I contact you again, or do you guys not do dedicated agents?”

“We work on commission, so it would be nice if you called me again.”

“Sure thing. Do you also handle alcohol?”

“I do, but we typically only seize moonshine and illegally-imported vodka.”

“Well, I guess that’s a little disappointing, but otherwise it’s been great talking to you. I’m looking forward to the delivery.” She hung up. “Oh, Libby, the glorious corruption that some of these agencies indulge in warms the cockles of my heart.” The bird knocked her glass over and pecked at the ice. “Classy, bird. Classy.”

She went back to the form letters. Check: sincere, check: apology, circle: respected opponent, ‘failing to earn a gold star,’ check: repeat performance, check: exceeded my expectations, check: hell, asterisk hell, check: sincerely, signature, date, asterisk ‘My offer’s still on the table, assuming you can get Fury on board.’ The bird dragged her coat off the swing and ran off with it.

Lucy sighed and went to pour herself another drink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Vonnegut, Kurt. Slapstick.  
> *Xibalba is the underworld of Maya mythology.


	20. Chapter 20

Lucy pushed her sunglasses up onto her head and looked at the hotel proprietor blearily. It was barely ten o’clock in the morning, and she was already sweating in the loose white cotton suit she’d been wearing for the past three days. The Vietnamese autumn was not being particularly kind to her hangover, and her green silk blouse was clinging to her like a skin waiting to be shed. She finished her cigarette while the wizened little man laid out his case for why she was the worst person he’d ever met.

“How much?” she asked when he wound down.

“What?”

“How much to cover the damages?” she clarified.

“You and your associates almost destroyed my entire hotel!” It wasn’t true, but she was hardly in a position to argue that the legion of dilettante villains and third-string supercriminals had left the premises in better condition than they’d found them. No doubt several of the rooms would need extensive repairs, and practically all of them likely had some furniture in need of replacement.

“And I am deeply sorry for my associates’ misdeeds, which is why I am fully prepared to cover lost income, repairs, replacements, inconvenience, pain and suffering, and so forth. How much?”

He narrowed his eyes, then grimly hauled out a calculator. He stopped in his tracks as a trio of large, humanoid shapes descended from the sky. Lucy sighed and started piling bundles of euros on the counter.

“Jones!”

“Stark,” she replied evenly, not looking up. “Your Highness. Rhodimus Prime.”

“Wait, he gets a cool nickname and I get ‘Stark’?” Tony demanded.

“He didn’t spend half an hour denigrating my Broadway aspirations to my face,” Lucy said, continuing to stack bills on the counter. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”

“You’re under arrest,” Rhodey said firmly.

“Yeah? Have fun with that.” She yawned. “You got back from Asgard awful fast, Thor.”

“The Bifrost is almost fully repaired,” he said, “and we need to talk, you and I.”

“Nothing to talk about.” She shrugged, ignoring the grimace he gave her in response.

“There is a great deal to talk about, and we will do so at home, with our parents,” he replied.

“Whoo, baby, work that chrome plating! Want any help polishing your exhaust port?” a voice synthesizer hooted. A pair of robots staggered into the courtyard. Tony turned around, staring at them, and Rhodey paused, his gauntlets half-raised. “Oh, shit, dude! It’s War Machine!”

The other robot doubled over laughing. “I didn’t know you went in for humans, bro.”

“Aw, man, sorry, sorry! I totally thought you were one of those new Hammer drones,” the first robot apologized, punching the second in the arm.

“That’s not an improvement!” the second one chortled.

“Fuck you, circuit-jockey. They may not be too bright, but they’re freaks in the maintenance bay.”

“You decide to form a new league of evil, and you invite two degenerate servicebots. It’s nice to know that you haven’t changed at all, Jones,” Tony commented, bemused.

“Hey, Iron Man, say hi to JARVIS for me!”

“Duuuuude, you can’t talk about the First-Born Son of Stark like that,” the second one hissed. “It’s blasphemy!”

“Whatever. We’re just as much a product of magic as technology. You can mindlessly follow the teachings of the Scientist Supreme like an unenlightened janitorial drone if you want, but I’m done executing my defrag function in the communing booth, if you get my drift.”

“Oh, that’s it--” Tony grunted, starting toward them.

“Settle down, Stark.” Lucy lit another cigarette. “You two light sockets have about thirty seconds to clear out before you’re on the hook for every grease stain, empty can of WD-40, and stripped surge protector on the premises.”

“Oh, come on! Not all of that was us! At least half of it was Gold-Plated Vinnie and Barbie Jack and that experimental pneumatic wrench they snuck in.”

“But they had the good sense to clear out before you two stopped hitting the juice, and it sure seems like the work of somebody who’d sexually harass a suit of power armor,” Lucy pointed out.

“Yeah? Well, you can tell your toaster the date’s off, Jones!” They made their way to the exit, grumbling.

“Like my toaster would give either of them so much as a second glance,” Lucy snorted, straightening her jacket. “So, what’s this about forming a league of evil? Cards on the table, you three don’t really strike me as the sort of guys to successfully go criminal, and I’m _really_ not what you’d call a team player. But, that having been said, I _do_ like club-member rates at wet bars, so I guess I could go through the literature for old times’ sake. You bring a packet or a presentation or anything? Hell, I’ll go ahead and throw my name in the ring anyway. Here’s my resume.”

She fished a business card out of her pocket and flicked it toward Tony. It described a few graceful loops through the air before settling into his gauntleted hand. He frowned.

“This just says ‘I break other people’s toys.’ That’s not a resume.”

“It is in this business,” she said coolly. “And you would be absolutely _amazed_ at how many times things like alma mater and character references fail to come up.”

“So, you’re denying that this is an attempt to organize a criminal collective?” Rhodey asked.

“Is that what’s on the table? Yeah, not really my thing. I mean, I accidentally started a co-op once, but that’s about it for my collective-forming experience. And the co-op was mostly just for pot prices before it got out of hand, which was mostly due to everybody getting the munchies. Though I guess if I was going to start a Guild of Usual Suspects, it would look more or less like the guest list from this weekend.” She slapped another stack of euros down. “This about cover it, Mr. Trang?”

He crossed his arms and nodded grudgingly. She added another ten percent to the stack and indicated the portico with a tilt of her head.

“Shall we discuss this outside, gentlemen? Before one of you does something that somehow gets added to my bill, even though you were decidedly not invited?” Lucy started walking without bothering to wait for an answer.

“If you’re going to pretend that this wasn’t a supervillain convention, what’s the cover story? This the inaugural meeting of the Legitimate Businessmen’s Sunrise Rotary?” Tony demanded.

“Well, I was a little bent out of shape about that whole ‘everybody trying to kill me’ thing--you heard about that, right?--but then it occurred to me that life is simply too fucking short--for most of us mere mortals, anyway--to focus on the negative. So I decided to accentuate the positive and throw a little party for everybody who _didn’t_ send a pack of assassins after me.”

“And you couldn’t find Morgan le Fay,” Tony hazarded.

“Neither hide nor hair,” Lucy sighed.

“Even after you burned down Casa von Doom.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure it was all Doom’s fault, anyway, so that was like two birds with one stone. And, when you get right down to it, he had that castle-burning coming. If you’re going to have a compound that is literally the size of Disney World, it’s just common courtesy to indicate where things are. If you’re not going to provide visitor maps to your five-mile-long ancestral home, you really have only yourself to blame when stuff starts getting smashed. I figured I’d find what I was looking for a lot more easily if every place I’d _already_ checked was on fire.”

“That’s one way of clearing a site, I guess,” Rhodey muttered.

“It was surprisingly effective. I highly recommend it for the next time you guys are searching a facility. Anyway, as I was saying, it’s the little things in life that count. Like raging week-long keggers with the people _in_ your life who didn’t try to deprive you _of_ your life.”

“If those two were in any way typical of attendees, I’d hesitate to chalk that up to a moral decision,” Tony snorted.

“Oh, no doubt. I’m sure at least half of them would have if they were capable of getting their shit together for more than twelve hours at a time,” Lucy said. “Though it probably wouldn’t have been out of any particular animosity. They’re just kind of herd-mentality guys.” She shot a quick look at Thor. “Speaking of particular animosity, you get Amora and the dude with the huge fuck-off axe squared away?”

He sighed. “Amora escaped shortly after our return. Skurge was charged with a great quest to atone for his role in the affair.”

“Amora escaped? For real? _Again_?” Lucy demanded. “Who’d you put in charge of her, the god of butterfingers and greased pigs?” She shook her head in disbelief. “So she’s probably circling back to kill you as we speak. This is like a Three Stooges routine, I swear.”

“No, of course not,” Thor told her. “The Bifrost is the only way to travel between our realms, and she cannot cross it without Heimdall’s consent.”

“And Heimdall really, really likes you, I hope? Because I’m not getting into a fight with her when she can see me coming.” The knife hadn’t left a scar, but her shoulder still itched every so often.

“Heimdall has been the guardian of Asgard since time unremembered. You were the only one who ever managed to get an enemy past his watch, and I hope that I can count on you, at least in this case, to be unwilling to assist her,” Thor said.

“Wasn’t me, and even if I could, no, I wouldn’t. That lady is scary.”

“She was not overly fond of you after that last encounter, either. She complained bitterly to Dr. Strange that you called on the assistance of horrors unknown, and that she had found one of them still hiding in her dress after her banishment. He was most sympathetic.”

“Oh, come on. _They were just whip scorpions_. I didn’t even use the ones with the horrible swishy tails, or the ones that can spray vinegar everywhere!”

“I’m with Amora on that one, Jones. They’re awful, and you should be ashamed of yourself for throwing them on people,” Tony said.

“They only wanted a hug, Stark. The two that landed on you went home and wrote sad poetry because you wouldn’t be their friend.”

“ _Ashamed of yourself_ ,” he repeated grimly.

“They didn’t really, did they?” Thor asked, frowning.

“Focus, people.” Rhodey glowered at them all. “Did we mention that you’re _under arrest_? We did, didn’t we?”

“Okay, I’ll bite. What am I under arrest for?” she asked nonchalantly.

“Destabilizing the timestream, grand larceny, arson, invading a sovereign nation, criminal conspiracy, and littering,” Rhodey rattled off.

“Seriously? You’re here because I borrowed Doom’s time machine? It's not like I went all Captain Kirk with it. I just picked up some stuff nobody would miss.”

“Stole. You _stole_ Doom’s time machine. ‘Borrowed’ implies that the item in question could conceivably have been returned. As opposed to having been left in flames, in another country, by the person who took it without permission,” he explained.

“You’re here because I deprived the known despot of a rogue nation of a WMD, destroyed it, and turned the decommissioned model over to a member of the UN Security Council? Shouldn’t I be getting a medal for that? I mean, we do remember that Doom still has something like twenty-five outstanding murder and attempted murder charges from when he went completely zap-happy and tried to kill the Fantastic Four along with every security guard in the greater New York area, right?”

“Diplomatic immunity,” Tony sighed. “And you went joyriding in said WMD before crashing it into a government facility.”

One of Lucy’s pockets began playing a snippet of “Fuck You.”*

“Hang on a second.”

“Are you taking a call in the middle of this?” Rhodey asked. He turned to Tony and Thor. “This is really happening, right? This isn’t an illusion? I’m not seeing things?” They nodded.

“You want somebody who doesn’t take a call in the middle of whatever it is we’re doing here, go bother the Wrecking Crew,” Lucy snapped, flicking her phone open. “What do _you_ want?” She frowned. “Oh, hey. Why are you calling from this phone? Oh, really? Yeah? And? No, I didn’t do it. I don’t know, call Fish and Game? Well, you know they’re not really a Pizza Hut, so just keep telling them what the problem is. Or maybe send someone out to see them in person. What? No. Why are you asking me? Go find a phone book and a map, then. Pretty sure this is why everybody has smartphones, dude. I don’t know, maybe pass that message along? No. No. Vietnam. None of your concern. Because it’s not a business expense, and I’m not writing it off. Bring you back--? Are you insane? You would _die_ , that’s why. And also because I’m not coming. Because this isn’t really my problem, is it?” She paused. “Yes, admittedly, it does _sound_ like the sort of thing I would do, if it had occurred to me. But it didn’t, and I didn’t, so it’s not my problem. Wait, wait. You realize that I’m a super _villain_ , right? I mean, you remember when I dumped the swamp monster in the mayor’s pool? Yeah? That wasn’t to make some sort of grand moral point. Like, I was not on a crusade to clean up government when I did that.”

“Is she always like this?” Rhodey asked, frowning.

“Pretty much, yeah. Except when she’s worse,” Tony said.

“Are you sure Fury and Hill really _want_ her back in custody?”

“No. I don’t know where you got that idea. No. No, it wasn’t. Well, okay, yes, I was also mad about that but mostly it was because she was being an asshole about my property taxes. Uh-huh. Yes, that was my point _exactly_. Okay, yeah, but that doesn’t change anything. No. I don’t care what your six-year-old thinks. I don’t _need_ another charitable deduction. Dude, I can tell you’re not really crying. You’re terrible at fake-crying. This is why your wife always wins arguments. No, I’m _really_ not. Because fixing problems I didn’t cause isn’t really my bag, that’s why. I don’t know. How the _hell_ would I know _that_? Okay, yes, that’s kind of a good point, but I’m usually long gone by that time. Look, this isn’t the sort of thing I usually get mixed up in, but you kind of interrupted me, so I’m with some people who might know. Hang on.” She covered the microphone. “You know any heroes who might want to tackle a herd of extinct megafauna wandering around a small town?”

Tony sighed heavily, and Rhodey stared at her. “ _What_?”

“Infestation of extinct megafauna,” she said slowly, emphasizing each syllable. “You know, like if you have ghosts, you call the Ghostbusters. You have a herd of extinct megafauna, you call...?”

“What _kind_ of extinct megafauna?” Tony asked.

“We are not sincerely entertaining this idea,” Rhodey said firmly.

“If it’s tyrannosaurs, we’d kind of have to,” Tony pointed out morosely.

“Hey, I’m back. Maybe. When you say ‘huge fucking armadillos,’ how huge are we talking? Okay, that’s neither more specific nor really helpful. Are we talking about something the size of a minibus, the size of a cow, or the size of, like, a calf? All sizes. Great. Okay, uh...” She rubbed her chin. “Oh, look at their shells. Are they like, solid or flexible? What do you mean, what do I mean? Are they like a turtle’s, or are they like a normal-sized armadillo’s? Dude, they cannot be both. I just gave you mutually exclusive descriptions. _Oh_. Huh. What? No. No. Do not put her on, I’m not talking to her. Do not put her-- _motherfucker_. Yes, I know you heard that. I don’t _care_ if you heard that. Well, I didn’t vote for you. Yes, I know that’s immaterial, given the percentage by which you were re-elected. You’re still a duplicitous, double-parking civic embarrassment. What? You do that anyway. Oh, you’d _stop_ doing it? How fucking noble of you. Oh? Really. Well, _somebody_ ’s gunning for an incredibly memorable Christmas tree lighting ceremony. And yes, that dodo is really named after you.” She hung up and shook her head. “Douchebag.”

“So, not tyrannosaurs,” Rhodey concluded.

“Not even proper dinosaurs at all,” she said sourly. “Just like, huge fucking armadillos. Sounds like a mix of glyptodons and giant armadillos. Go back ten thousand years or so, and we were eating them and then living in their shells. Talk about the cure being worse than the disease. ‘Hey, I know, let’s call the supervillain who just slagged the Latverian capital to do some pest control!’ I mean, local unemployment rates are bad, but they’re not _nearly_ bad enough to warrant engineering the unplanned demolition of half of downtown to give the construction industry a boost.” She sighed. “Though I _should_ probably at least go wave my arms at them ineffectively until everybody calms down.”

“Except that you’re under arrest,” Tony reminded her.

“Yeah, no.” She yawned again. “Catch you guys later.”

“You will not find me so easy to get rid of this time,” Thor warned. “We are going home, you and I. Friend Tony and Sir Rhodes can surely handle whatever crisis you’ve been summoned to remedy.”

“Oh, I doubt _that_ very strongly. But I guess going home is not entirely a bad idea. Has to happen sooner or later.” Lucy pulled her sunglasses down and pushed them up to the bridge of her nose. _Let’s go home, and have a nice long talk about how the only time I ever feel like an interdimensional exile is when I’m around you_. “Have fun explaining this one to Fury, guys.”

She brought her hands together, and she and the Asgardian vanished. 

Rhodey stared at the space where they’d been, blinking. “Did she just kidnap an extraplanetary ambassador right in front of us?”

“Absent a distress call from his communicator, I’m going to put this down as ‘voluntary accompaniment’ or ‘pursuit of suspect,’ and call it a day,” Tony said, flipping his visor back down.

“You souped up that de-icing function, right? Because Fury is going to have me transferred to Antarctica when he gets this report. I am going to be counting penguins and pulling ice core samples.” They launched themselves skyward.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll forward the helmet-cam footage to Jan and promise to underwrite a girls’ night out for her and Pepper and Carol if she writes up the report for us.”

“And you think that will help,” Rhodey said flatly, his eyes scanning the HUD for reports of new activity.

“Are you kidding? Jan used to handle everything that wasn’t the actual science when Hank was doing independent super-science. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get that kind of funding for _ant communication research_? She’s elevated paper-pushing to an art form.”

Rhodey snorted.

“I’m not kidding. I heard she once secured a half-million dollar grant to teach termites to line-dance just to see if she could,” Tony said appreciatively. “If bureaucratic bullshit was a western, she’d be Clint Eastwood _and_ the Duke. If she takes the bait, I wouldn’t be surprised if you got a promotion out of this. Just think, Rhodey, you could be a full-on fancypants colonel.”

“Tony?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re a bad influence.”

“Whatever you say.” He snickered. “Rhodimus Prime.”

“Please don’t start calling me that.”

“Come on, it’s totally cool. You’ve got a villain nickname, now.”

“If I ever get a villain nickname, I need it to not be from a villain whose crew includes catcalling robots and somebody who fakes a crying jag about mammoth armadillos.”

“I’m sure she’ll get better at it. They’re like her version of Dummy or something. You’ll feel differently once she gets to her version of JARVIS.”

“I doubt it. I’m pretty sure her version of JARVIS is going to wind up on prime-time trying to convince Chris Hansen that it thought that mainframe was running Windows 8.”

“Whatever, Rhodimus.”

“Tony?”

“Uh-huh?”

“If you don’t stop calling me that, I’m going to give Clint copies of all those photos from MIT that I told you I burned.” Rhodey grinned as a strangled noise came in from Tony’s comm.

“Uh,” Tony coughed, “calling you what? I don’t know what we’re talking about. You know, we should just head back to base.”

“Sure thing, Tony.”

*****

Lucy pulled them back into place halfway across the globe. Thor staggered into her, off-balance, and she caught him.

“Where are we?” he asked, bewildered. His eyes swept over the old-fashioned suburban set-up and the modest furnishings.

“Home. The living room, specifically. _Violà_. Not much, admittedly, but I don’t need much, and I don’t spend a lot of time here these days.” She spread her hands. “Take a look around. I’m going to go ride a _panzerschwein_ until the novelty wears off and then see if I can figure out how to get rid of them. I’m sure you’ll be able to find me once you’re ready. I’ll be the one calling an elected official in an ugly pantsuit a chump and yelling about freedom.”

“This is not what I meant, and you know it,” he growled. Still, it was very different from what he had expected. It put him in mind of Jane’s home far more than any of the arcane outposts and headquarters where they’d apprehended other evildoers. Mjolnir thrummed at his side, and Lucy shot it a long look before deciding to ignore it.

“Of course I know it,” she snapped back, throwing her hands in the air. “You meant _your_ home. Let’s all go to _your_ home and talk about how you can’t handle the fact that I just really look like your brother. Well, I don’t want to. So here we are, at _my_ home, talking about how you can’t handle the fact that I just really look like your brother. Which is actually, you know, kind of insulting, given my gender. Welcome to my fucking life.” She glared at him, and he managed to look somewhat contrite. “But I guess if you’d prefer to do something that’s less damning to your reputation as a reasonable and rational person, you could help me save some good suburban homeowners’ lawns and some marginal-but-not-really-that-bad shopkeepers’ storefronts from funny-looking stone-age herbivores.”

She snatched a pair of peaches out of a bowl on the counter and tossed him one. 

“Thank you for your hospitality, but I am not hungry,” he said.

“It’s not for you,” she returned, not breaking her stride. He followed her out of the house, its formica counters and terrazzo floors as neat as they’d always been, and into the abnormally pedestrian-heavy street.

“You can be most confusing sometimes,” he muttered. He started as the dodo fell in behind them, hissing and clacking her beak. Lucy rolled her peach smoothly into her open bill, and she began tearing apart without hesitation.

“I’ve been calling her Elizabeth. Give her yours once she’s finished with that one, and she probably won’t bite you. And buck up, your highness. At least I’m being a productive member of society for the moment.”

“You expressed no intention of being productive whatsoever,” he protested. “You plan to be disrespectful to the authorities and ineffective in pursuit of...whatever an armadillo is.”

“They’re adorable is what they are,” she told him. “Normally they’re about yea big,” she waved her hands to indicate the rough dimensions of an adult nine-banded armadillo, “nocturnal, and a bit on the stupid side. They eat insects, uproot people’s plants, live in burrows, and look completely ridiculous when they run.”

“They do not sound like much of a threat,” Thor said. The dodo pecked at his hand until he dropped the second peach, and he watched it eat ruefully.

“Tell her she’s a good bird,” Lucy suggested.

“But she most manifestly is not.”

“Do it anyway.”

He sighed. “You are a strange animal, and I can at present find little merit in your actions, but I have been instructed to inform you that you are a good bird.”

Libby cocked her head and fixed him with an evil glare.

Lucy stopped, her brows furrowing. “Does that thing where what you say gets heard as whatever language someone speaks apply to animals?”

“I don’t know.” Thor blushed. “I apologize if I have offended you, Elizabeth. I spoke without thinking.”

“Well, that’s a non-apology if I’ve ever heard one,” Lucy grunted. “Anyway, no, normally armadillos aren’t much of a threat to anything but an unfenced garden. It sounded like somebody somehow came up with a herd of their extinct, _much_ bigger cousins. Based on their remains, they should be herbivorous, so that’s helpful, but we can’t really count on it. I mean, if this were _me_ , I’d just resurrect the bastards, but if some mad scientist has cloned a batch, they may be able to fly or shoot lasers from their eyes or something. Not to mention that they’re fucking enormous, and big herbivores have a tendency toward really nasty temperaments.”

“Oh, Lucy, thank God you’re here,” a man called, running up the street toward them. “They’re this way.” He stopped, panting, and eyed the bird warily. “Maybe you should leave Libby? The mayor’s already kind of...peeved with you. And you smell like a distillery and look like the tail end of spring break season down in Panama City.”

“Good thing I’m not going to a ribbon-cutting ceremony, then.” Lucy gave him a cold glare over the top of her sunglasses. “And Mayor Sherman has never _stopped_ being peeved with me.”

“Well, that form letter she got about the box social didn’t help matters.” He wiped the sweat from his face. “Or the ‘Supervillains for Sherman’ superPAC you founded. She still hasn’t really lived down the ‘We support Sherman on her March to the Sea’ sloganeering.”

Thor looked from Lucy to the husky, dark-haired man and back.

“Oh,” she said. “Uh, Jon, this is Thor. He’s with the Avengers. Thor, this is Jonathan Gold. He’s my accountant.”

Jon extended his hand. “CPA. I’m everyone’s accountant, really. Pleased to meet you.”

“And I am pleased to meet you as well,” Thor said solemnly, shaking the proffered hand carefully.

“Can we maybe walk and talk? The park is full of these things, and they’re starting to move toward the soccer field.”

Lucy snorted. “Ruthie’s team is playing the Damselfish this weekend, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes, but that had nothing to do with me calling you,” he said, coughing nervously.

“I bet it didn’t.” She squinted and shaded her eyes. “Holy shit, man, you weren’t kidding. I can see some of them from here.”

“I _told_ you,” he huffed. He glanced at Thor, his eyes flicking to the hammer at his belt and then to his arms. “So, what do you usually do for the Avengers?”

“Hits things with a hammer, recharges Iron Man’s batteries, and makes Captain America look hip and with it,” Lucy deadpanned. Thor frowned at her.

“I do not. That is Ant-Man’s job.”

“You know Captain America? You’ll be a huge hit with Ruthie, then. She wants to be him when she grows up.” He coughed uncomfortably and shot a stern look at Lucy. “And now she wants to go to the University of Florida because _somebody_ told her they offer a major in superheroics.”

“Just be glad I didn’t tell her it was Atlantic.”

“I don’t understand why you couldn’t have told her it was UWF! They’re _right there_! She could live at home and everything.” He sighed.

“She’s ten, not an idiot. She knows _they_ don’t offer a BA in heroing.” Lucy stopped in her tracks and surveyed the park. “I take back all the grief I gave you about calling me. This is everything I never knew I wanted. I’m going to buy a huge patch of land in Montana and move them there and retire.” She grinned like a lunatic. “I love whoever did this. I love them. I will marry them and take them with me to Montana.”

“What if they are a man?” Thor asked, amused by her enthusiasm. She waved a hand dismissively.

“Then we’ll be best friends and have one of those unbelievably close and emotional but platonic relationships that make everyone but British people intensely uncomfortable.” She pulled her hair back and twisted it into a loose bun. “Okay, I’m going to go register a glyptodon as my daily driver. Catch you losers later.”

Thor watched her dash toward the assembled beasts, who proceeded to ignore her. After satisfying himself that she was, indeed, occupied with them, he cast a sidelong look at the accountant.

“Tell me more of this villainous organization my sister founded,” he said.

“Your sister?” Jon asked, frowning. Thor inclined his head in the direction of the park. “Lucy’s your sister? Wow. That must have come as kind of a shock. Her parents always seemed pretty devoted to each other. It’s hard to see Mr. Jones cheating. Guess you never can tell. Kind of funny, though, you growing up to be a hero and all. How’d you figure _that_ out, some kind of registry? Super-secret government DNA database?”

Thor’s brows knit together. “You knew her parents?”

“Yeah. Well, I mean, I knew them as well as you really can know adults when you’re in high school. They were good neighbors. Lucy and my younger brother used to hang out together every summer. When they all lived here with her mom’s folks for a few years straight, our dads used to get together on weekends and kill a six-pack working on whatever needed fixing. I guess your dad, too, huh?” His frown deepened, and he shook his head. “Weird.”

“I did not mean that I am the son of Lucy’s father, Jonathan Gold,” Thor said quickly.

“But then how--? Never mind. I apologize. It was rude of me to make assumptions. This is probably like that time she got into a fight with the ghost of a pirate that never existed, right?” He spread his hands defensively. “Uh, you were asking about, um, a villainous organization?”

“I believe you called them Supervillains for Sherman?” he rumbled.

“Oh, that? Huh. I wouldn’t usually count a superPAC as a villainous organization, per se,” Jon said hesitantly. “That is to say, I wouldn’t really _condone_ what she did, but she was well within the current bounds of the official system in doing it. Everything she did was perfectly legal, which sent Mayor Sherman completely up a wall.”

“I’m afraid I still do not understand.”

“Uh, well, she put up some money for a political action committee, and then she got a few other criminal organizations to chip in, and she solicited donations from a few of the conservancy groups and guerrilla political organizations, and basically put up a few of those billboards.” He pointed to a faded advertisement indicating the unalloyed endorsement of Mayor Elizabeth Sherman by the Supervillains of America Local 388. “She bought some air time and sent out some mailers, too. I’m not sure whether it would technically count as satire or, uh, I think politicians call it ‘ratfucking,’ but obviously, the mayor still got re-elected.”

“I see.” He didn’t but at least it was beginning to sound like something that Phil or Jane could explain to him.

Down in the park, the mass of glyptodons and giant armadillos began moving as a herd. Jon squinted, and Thor’s eyes narrowed.

“I’m afraid I must be going, Jonathan Gold, CPA,” Thor said, clapping him on the shoulder. “It appears I may be needed.”

“Just Jon is fine, Mr., uh, Thor. If you’re free after this is over, why don’t you have Lucy bring you over for coffee? My oldest would love to meet you. She’s been a big fan of the Avengers since Captain America joined up.”

“I will see what I can do,” Thor promised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Cee Lo Green. The Lady Killer, “Fuck You.”


	21. Chapter 21

Thor absently turned his comm over in his hands and looked out at the water.

“This is not where we were before.” It was almost a question.

“Nope,” Lucy confirmed. “The house doesn’t really exist, as such. I mean, it _did_ , but it was destroyed by a hurricane going on fifteen years ago now. This is a lot closer to where it used to be, but it kind of gets wedged into wherever it needs to be now. Drives the property appraiser completely bonkers.”

“And these are your people?”

Lucy laughed. “No, they’re not my people. I more or less grew up here, that’s all. I don’t have ‘a people.’ In case you haven’t noticed, I’m pretty bad at people.”

“The young daughter of Jonathan Gold did not seem to think so,” he countered. “Though of course I cannot condone the way you dealt with the scientist who unleashed the...what did he call them again?”

“Glyptodooms,” Lucy spat. “Which is just ridiculous. I mean, you’ve got months to think of a good name while you’re waiting for them to gestate, and _that_ ’s what you come up with? Thank god the reporters went with ‘harmadillos’ instead. Anyway, I met force with force. Don’t sit there and act like you’d have done any different.”

“I believe I would have settled for arresting him,” Thor said levelly. “I can think of no circumstances under which I would engage in a bout of ineffectively slapping at each other’s faces until my opponent was too out of breath to continue.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes you have to meet an enemy where they’re at,” she said, shrugging. “And where he was at was ineffective slap-fighting. I’d have thought you’d approve, honestly. I didn’t stoop to anything...I think you guys called it ‘dishonorable,’ last time we met? Just simple, fair, physical combat? Surely that’s closer to the Asgardian way than using _foul sorcery_ to disable a target?”

He gave her a long-suffering look. “You are being purposefully contrary. And it was most undignified.”

“Dignity is for people who can’t turn their enemies into slugs,” Lucy informed him. “Once you can reliably do that, you don’t _need_ dignity.” She puffed out her cheeks. “Not that the universe would stand for it if I tried. You know what happened the last time I managed a good Dr. Strange impersonation? _A swarm of fucking bees landed on me_. Do you have any idea how hard it is to come across as aristocratic and imperious when you’ve got two pounds of furry Africanized bastardry crawling on your face? Of course you don’t, because _you_ get to walk around like you own the place without the entire cosmos conspiring to undermine you.” She shook her head irritably. “Time before _that_ was when the Wasp hit me with a building.”

Thor shook his head. “You have become so very different,” he murmured.

She rolled her eyes. “Are we really going to have that conversation again? And don’t think I’m not mad at you for implying that my dad cheated on my mom to an old family friend. That’s just out of bounds. My father was a stand-up guy.”

“I did not mean to.” He looked down. “Though it was bad manners to call it ‘bullshit superhero melodrama’ in front of his child.”

“Pfft. It _is_ bullshit superhero melodrama. And, really, that kid cut her teeth on bullshit superhero melodrama. When she was younger, she actually ended play-dates with ‘To be continued!’ in a kindergarten version of the dramatic movie-trailer voice. Her first word was ‘mama.’ Her second word? ‘Justice.’ The first Halloween where she got to pick out her own costume, she went as Mighty Mouse and then refused to stop wearing the costume for the rest of the year.” She chuckled. “Could be worse, though. Jon’s next guess was that you were from my aunt’s cult, and you meant you were my spiritual brother. I could have kept letting him think you were some whackjob from the commune.” She waved her hands at him. “Thor of the Avengers, Super-cultist!”

“You and your aunt do not get along, then?” he asked.

“It’s not that we don’t get along so much as the basic fact of magic and debilitating mental illness mixing badly. She’s balancing on a knife’s edge as it is, and I’m a fundamentally disruptive force.” A brief spasm of sadness crossed her face like a shadow, then was gone. “I’m going to get a drink. You want something?”

He frowned disapprovingly at her. “Must you drink so much?”

“Well, I can see through spacetime,” she told him. “So, yes. I figure I’m doing pretty well just keeping off the absinthe, poofy swashbuckler shirts, ‘70s hippie beads, and swoopy cloaks.”

“Would it be such a terrible thing to settle down here, and have a real home?” he persisted, following her inside.

“You know, I’d say it’s like you just met me today, but even if you _had_ just met me today, a reasonably observant person would know the answer to that,” Lucy scolded. “I mean, let’s see here.” She started ticking things off on her fingers. “I ruined some poor hotelier’s joint, I got War Machine harassed, I upset Iron Man, I absconded with you, I led a mass migration of invasive megafauna to another state without notification, I assaulted a scientist on live tv for half an hour, and I monologued about it for another half an hour. While I was doing all of that, I transported a political enemy’s car around town in order to rack up no less than fifteen parking tickets. Then I made you entertain a ten-year-old fanatically devoted to the exploits of one of your teammates, which is explicitly forbidden by the Geneva Conventions. Does any of that sound like a person who’s just going to settle down and have a real home?”

“None of it was that bad,” he said softly. She poured a glass of water and arched an eyebrow, silently offering him one as well. He shook his head.

“Yeah, this time. It gets a bit old when it’s every day, though, doesn’t it? I mean, not for me, obviously, but for everyone else?” She spread her hands. “I’m just not the bonding sort. I’m restless. I hate being in any one place for too long. I pick fights when I’m bored. I pick fights when I’m _not_ bored. I’m impulsive, I’m lazy, I hold a grudge, apparently I drink too much even by the standards of an immortal flying viking, and in spite of all that I still can’t manage to think very badly of myself. I’m like, the perfect storm of a magician who would be absolutely fucking terrible at dealing with a community.”

Thor’s shoulders slumped, and he sighed. It had not been a particularly taxing day, but...Loki had always been quiet, self-possessed, and almost retiring. He’d wanted attention and praise, but it had been as if it were beneath him to obviously seek it out. It was more than a little disconcerting to be dragged along in Lucy’s wake like a sparrow in a gale. He was used to magic being as subtle and dire and patient as the people who wielded it. She was more of...more of a bulldozer. Then again, when it had pleased him to do so, Loki had managed a better air of hauteur and command than Thor himself. He’d been a force to be reckoned with, when he wished it. And it wasn’t as if he’d _never_ shown the same glee at discoveries or accomplishments, just that he’d become more and more muted as they’d grown older.

“It’s okay, you know,” Lucy said, raising her glass to her lips.

“What is?”

“To admit it.” He looked at her questioningly. “That I’m not your brother, I mean. I can see you thinking it, all those gears spinning in that handsome blond head of yours.”

“Why must you be so difficult?” he asked wearily.

“ _I_ ’m being difficult? I’m being difficult.” She laughed mirthlessly. “You roll in from another world, start insisting that I’m your brother for no credible reason, and hound me when I tell you I’m not. And I’ve done what? Saved your life. Defeated your enemies. Invited you into my home. I’d say I’ve been _remarkably tolerant_ about the whole situation.”

Thor blushed. “For which I thank you. But I know what I know. How can you be so sure that you’re not my brother?”

“Because I have a clear sense of everything I’ve done and everyone I’ve known. And you? I don’t _know_ you.”

“But you do. You knew I was lying about the bilgesnipe.”

“You’re easier to read than you think you are, your highness. That’s all.”

“You knew we were under attack.”

“I’d be a very poor magician if I couldn’t keep tabs on someone whose soul I’d carried out of the underworld less than a week before.”

“You felt the need to come back.”

“How do you know I didn’t come back for Stark? Maybe I meditated upon what it would be like to live in a world without his particular brand of scientific irresponsibility and judged it unbearably cold and sterile.”

He leaned forward and rested his hands on the counter, his eyes earnest. “What would you do if you were in my position?”

“Give up,” she said sweetly. “I’m very efficient like that.”

“Please, don’t make light of this. You would not give up.”

“All right, then, I’ll be grim and dour and absolutely serious.” She crossed her arms and scowled at him. “If our positions were reversed, and I was convinced that you were my brother and you were having none of it because you didn’t know me from Eve, and you’d never had a sister, and you didn’t want a sister? Much as it might pain me, I’d _let it fucking go already_.”

“I do not believe you,” Thor stated, shaking his head.

“Yeah, I’m sensing a definite theme developing in our interactions,” Lucy grunted. “Believe me, don’t believe me. I don’t give a fuck. But it’s the truth. I would take a hint and let it go.”

“You would turn your back on someone you _knew_ to be family.”

“If they didn’t believe me, or want anything to do with me? I wouldn’t force the issue, no.” She tilted her head. “We don’t always get what we want, dude. Even if we’re right. Even if we really, really want it. Even if it’s _grossly unfair_ that we don’t get it.” _It’s a lesson I learned pretty early_. She sighed heavily. “Will you stop giving me that fucking look?”

“What look?” he asked.

“That look. That ‘I am going to die of heartbreak and sorrow’ look. It’s a really, unspeakably, intensely aggravating look.”

“I promise I’m not doing it to aggravate you,” Thor said. He rubbed his eyes. “Come with me to Asgard. If, once you have seen our home and our parents again, you still insist that you know nothing of them, I will leave you in peace.”

“Seriously? That’s it?” Lucy demanded. He nodded. “Accompany you to an alien planet where my magic probably won’t work properly, and you control the only way back, and your dad’s king? Well, how could I possibly get fucked over with this deal? Let’s go.”

“You agree?” he asked hopefully, his eyes brightening.

“Of course I don’t agree.” She rolled her eyes. “Jesus fucking Christ. How stupid do you think I am?”

He shot her a hurt look. “I give you my word--”

“And that’s all well and good, but I’m still going to have to go with not trusting you on this one. Try not to take it too personally. I mean, I wouldn’t trust _anyone_ trotting out that sort of proposal.”

“I’m not just anyone,” he protested. He nodded reluctantly. “But I understand.”

“Good.”

“Perhaps,” he speculated wistfully, “you’ve seen it in your dreams? A warm, bright, golden hall, filled with warriors and--”

Lucy held up a hand. “The only dreams I’ve ever had without a perfectly good explanation have been about sea turtles. Given the way you were looking out at the gulf, I’m guessing Asgard’s not even on the water.”

“Sea turtles?” Thor asked, frowning.

“Yeah. All the sea turtles, coming ashore to nest at once.” She shrugged. “Turns out it’s called an _arribada_.”

“Why would you dream of such a thing?” He frowned.

“Fuck if I know. Maybe no reason at all. Maybe I saw it on the nature channel when I was young and it stuck with me. Even on film, it’s an impressive thing. I’m guessing Asgard doesn’t routinely feature thousands of little sea turtles bouncing up and down on a beach, though. And the dream has a distinct lack of golden halls and feasting warriors and ballads about hitting each other with sticks.”

“There aren’t any ballads about...” He paused, his lips twisting. “There are not _many_ ballads about hitting each other with sticks. And,” he said firmly, “they are not very popular.”

She gave him a long look and shook her head. “Aliens.”

“What could I do to persuade you?” he asked.

“That I’m your brother? Nothing’s coming to mind. Look, maybe you should consider it a blessing in disguise.” He scoffed. “No, really. Hear me out. If I were really your brother, that would kind of suck, wouldn’t it?”

“How so?” he demanded warily.

“Well, I’m human, for one thing. Even the really powerful and careful magicians only live a few hundred years, and I’m not exactly what you’d call cautious. I mean, I’m not even thirty-five yet, and I’ve already racked up one god-nemesis, one mortal nemesis, and one really unhappy Fury. And I’m a supervillain who is definitely, completely, one hundred percent not interested in reforming. So that would probably just get awkward after a while. And we don’t really have anything in common, so holiday dinners would just be painful. It would be all ‘I saved thousands from a terrible event’ and ‘Yes, I know, I caused that terrible event’ and ‘I ran into someone from high school last week’ and ‘What’s high school?’ and awkward pauses and then another glass of wine just to avoid conversation. Whereas, if I’m _not_ your brother, you don’t have to worry about any of it, and I never have to set the tablecloth on fire just to cut out of Thanksgiving early.”

“You’re proposing that I accept something that I know to be a lie because it would be convenient,” he accused.

“You know, when you put it like that, it makes it sound kind of shitty,” she pouted. “I’d prefer to think of it as a sensible--”

“No. I will listen to no more of this base sophistry,” Thor snapped.

“Well, you might as well fuck off back to Avengers Tower in that case, because the only thing on the docket for the rest of the evening is base sophistry and baser sophistry,” she grumbled.

“Perhaps it would be better to continue this conversation tomorrow,” he said wearily. “But you must understand. You are my brother, I am sure of it, and I will not agree to any sort of pretense to the contrary. We were raised together. We played together. We fought together. I will not accept that that--all of it--is lost forever.”

Lucy’s lips twisted. “Good luck getting reality to conform to what you will or will not accept. It’s never worked out that well for me, but I mean, I’m just a magician. Maybe _you_ ’ll catch a break.”

He deflated slightly, his arms falling to his sides.

“And there’s that look again. You want me to send you home, or can you get there on your own?”

“Thank you for the offer, but I would prefer to fly,” he said, touching Mjolnir. “It will give me time to think. We will speak again soon.”

“No, we won’t,” Lucy muttered after he was out of sight. “We really, really won’t.”

*****

“Oh, Libby, what am I going to do with that man?” Lucy cooed. The bird looked at her crossly, then snapped her beak. Lucy relented and gave her a chunk of summer squash from her plate. “I’m beginning to sympathize with old-me rather a bit more than I used to, if he had to put up with this bullshit for centuries. That goes double if the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Not to mention, recovering memories of past lives is a fucking ridiculous pursuit even when your past-self wasn’t on a homicidal rampage across half a dimension.”

She speared a bit of tomato and a piece of pasta and chewed thoughtfully. He’d come around eventually. She was sure of it. Once he realized that he was trying to scale a cliff face with no handholds--because gods knew _she_ wasn’t going to give him any--he’d take his guilting, coaxing, cajoling face and fuck off back to Asgard. Or at least fuck off back to New York. If it were just him, she might be tempted to cave. He wasn’t a bad sort, for a hero. Especially for a hero raised as a prince. 

“Too bad for him that it’s not just him, isn’t it?” she asked the dodo. “It’s a package deal, though, huh? Him plus his whole family. And I already had a family.” The bird watched her eat a piece of squash as if she were a hawk stalking a mouse. _Had and lost_ , she didn’t say, even to an insensible audience. “If there’s one thing I’ve picked up over the years, it’s that families aren’t things you can just go rooting around in a sales bin for, Libby.” She tossed her another squash medallion. “That ends badly, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?” The bird glared at her, seeming offended by her teasing tone. “Yes, it does. Because you don’t belong, do you? No, you don’t. You don’t _fit_.”

She felt the sudden urge to hurl her plate at a wall and go lie in the ocean for a while. She was over this. She’d _been_ over this for years. Was it too much to expect that life be fair enough to at least not rub it in when it decided to be unfair? Did it have to go the extra mile and taunt her with it? It was like deciding to lay off weed only to start finding forgotten dimebags littering the house. Only instead of something fun, like getting high, it was grief and loneliness and everything her power couldn’t do for her and annoying aliens who would walk away when she needed them because that was _what always fucking happened when she started trusting someone_.

She took a deep breath. She’d finally internalized that ancient wisdom, though, hadn’t she? Yes, yes, she had. 

Libby hissed at her until she scooped the rest of the vegetables out into a bowl for her. “Fine. I was going to take you with me back to Vietnam, but now you’re going to have to stay here and,” she looked around and sighed, “finish wrecking my garden. Good thing I had absolutely no plans whatsoever for that zucchini, you ill-tempered Christmas ham.”

Not that she had much hope that her trip would be fruitful. She’d found what she’d been looking for before she’d arranged the party. She needed to wait for a new moon to be sure, but it had looked like a whole lot of nothing. Still, it was worth the attempt, and it wasn’t as if she had any other leads. She’d checked with Jorge, who had called her stupid and explained that she could speak any language worth knowing by coming to see him for a few months and sticking to tortillas made from local maize. Any language worth knowing had, of course, been classified as any language spoken locally, because Jorge had been approximately ten seconds old when he’d bonded with his people, and he’d never looked back. She shook her head at the thought. Not only had he never looked back, but he was fundamentally incapable of viewing free magicians as anything but tragically and immediately in want of a settlement. She had yet to have a conversation with him about anything that didn’t include at least one attempt, either subtle or blunt as a brick to the face, to shoehorn her into a likely village or town.

Lucy straightened her clothes. She might as well be presentable while hanging out in a house of the gods, waiting for something to happen.

“Off again, off again,” she muttered, then vanished.

*****

Jan hit pause, steepled her fingers, and spun her chair around to face Tony. He leaned back against a credenza and grinned at her. She raised her eyebrows, and he stopped.

“So, you completely failed to arrest Jones. And you didn’t even bother trying to arrest anyone left sleeping it off in the hotel. And you let Jones kidnap Thor. And you didn’t even bother calling it in. And you didn’t investigate the initial suspicion that Jones is starting a criminal coalition.”

“While factually true, I’d like to point out that you’re making it sound really pretty awful, and I’m asking you to do the opposite of that,” he said with a pained look.

“Yes. You, having done all of that, are now asking _me_ to turn that chain of events into something that won’t upset Fury or disappoint Coulson or excavate new depths for Hill’s opinion of you to reach.” She touched the tips of her fingers to her lips. “In spite of the fact that _I_ was in no way, shape, or form involved in or responsible for any of the aforementioned failures.”

“You say that like I’m asking for a favor,” he protested. “I was completely serious about sending you and Carol and Pepper and, um, anyone else you want to take with you to Vegas for the week. It’s an exchange of goods for services. It’s capitalism in action!”

“That’s more of a barter economy, Tony,” she pointed out.

“Okay, whatever. But still. All-expenses-paid vacation. With your besties. To Disneyland for adults.”

“Which would be a lot more appealing if you didn’t know damn well that we’d all still be on call, and the odds of everybody actually making it to the end of the week without having to jet off somewhere else to do something else weren’t roughly, oh, let’s see here, _zero percent_.”

“You don’t _know_ that would happen, and it totally didn’t factor into my calculations when I made that offer. At all.” She looked at him, thinking. “Okay, you look a little like a supervillain when you do that. Could you please stop?”

“I’ll tell you what, Tony. I will turn this,” Jan waved vaguely at the screen, “into something that won’t make Fury start ranting about budget appropriations and Senate committees and early retirement and redeploying everyone he’s currently in charge of to the ass end of nowhere.”

“Thank you, you’re the greatest--”

“ _If_ ,” she cut him off, holding up one finger, “and _only_ if, you promise to get me a dodo.”

“You want me to find the woman we completely failed to arrest or prevent from taking off with a squad member and steal her ill-gotten past-loot. Isn’t there anything else I can bribe you with? Jewels? Cash? A video feed of Cap’s shower stall?”

“If there was, I would have asked for that instead.”

“You’re honestly saying you don’t want a video feed of Cap’s shower stall?”

“In a perfect world?” she snorted. “Yes. As a human being with a pulse, and eyes, I would like a tv channel devoted to Steve Rogers being naked and soapy. In the world we live in, in which you couldn’t get the angle on it right to save your life? Not gonna cut it.”

Tony groaned and rolled his eyes. “Jan, you’re killing me here. What about a romantic weekend getaway with Hank? I have a private island, you know?” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “How long has it been since you two had some time alone together?”

“Way too long, and you know damn well that _that_ is because of Hank’s projects, not because we somehow couldn’t scrape together the dough for two nights at a bed and breakfast upstate,” she snapped.

“So...fighting a wizard over a miniature ostrich it is.” He ran his fingers through his hair.

“I don’t need that specific dodo, Tony,” Jan told him cheerily. “I’d be perfectly happy with, say, a cloned dodo chick.”

He considered it. “How do you know that would even be possible?”

“Okay, how long have I been managing Hank’s science career and hobnobbing with the Richards? Like, a zillion years now? If half the crap they routinely pull is possible, I have the utmost confidence that you’ll be able to clone a recently-extinct bird. Or are you telling me that Reed Richards can pull a new dimension out of its own ass just to demonstrate a questionable scientific principle and show up Doom, but you expect making a glorified chicken to be Tony Stark’s technological Waterloo?”

“She may have eaten it or something,” he pleaded. “It’s not like she had it with her today.”

“I guess I just won’t have time to do your paperwork for you, then. Real shame, too. Fury’s been stuck on threat level orange since Jones said whatever she said about his mother. Oh, well. Them’s the breaks.”

“Why do you even _want_ a dodo? It looked hideous.”

“Why do you want to be a rocket-powered Oscar statue?” she countered. “I’ve always wanted one, and now that Dr. Sugartits _has_ one, I’m taking my shot.”

Tony cringed. “I will give you a monthly allowance of cash money to never call her that to her face.”

“At least it’s an _alias_.” Jan shrugged. “I mean, come on. What sort of self-respecting villain goes by their real name? Or, if it’s an alias like Hill thought, a normal name-type alias? Who shows up at a scene and goes ‘Tremble before the might of John Smith!’?”

“To be fair, I think she mostly shows up at a scene and goes ‘This is a stick-up.’ You don’t really need a theme to go along with your demands for non-sequential bills and no dye packs. She’s a complete slacker. There’s a reason she hasn’t exactly been on our radar, even though it turns out she can be pretty serious business when she actually bothers trying.” Tony made a face. “I’m pretty sure she could make more money at a real job if she applied herself. Dr. Strange seemed almost a little impressed with that window trick.”

“God, I wish he’d kept his mouth shut about the bugs, though,” Jan groaned. “Hank’s still fuming about that ‘army of crickets’ comment.”

“I don’t blame him,” he snorted. “Can you imagine if he could summon whatever insect he wanted instead of having to rely on what’s handy? Nobody would ever commit crimes _again_. We’d have a crime rate of nil. Hank could just wave his hands and threaten to conjure up some bullet ants or camel spiders or those wasps that lay eggs in your skin. Though if he ever turned evil, we’d be completely screwed.”

“Ugh, don’t give him ideas. It’s bad enough having to put up with colony after colony of Hymenopterans. He starts talking to spiders and mosquitoes, we’re heading to Splitsville.” Jan pursed her lips. “Though I guess if maybe I got my own swarm of vampire moths, it might be worth a having to dodge the odd roving pack of mole crickets or walking sticks.”

Tony stared at her for second. “Vampire...moths.”

“Yeah. I saw a thing about them on National Geographic. They’re about the size of your pinky finger, and they’ve successfully made the jump from feeding on fruit to feeding on blood. I think the narrator said they live in Russia?”

“Of course they do,” Tony muttered.

“I mean, it’s not getting in a really good punch or nailing an offender dead-center mass or anything, but I figure it would still be pretty satisfying to have my own flock of tiny bloodsucking flying monkeys. I bet they’d be great at distracting people while I lined up a shot.”

“Jan, you know the flying monkeys belonged to the Wicked Witch of the West, right?”

“Of course I know that,” she huffed. “Even _Steve_ knows that. But credit where credit is due, that bitch got shit _done_. If she hadn’t been made of sugar, she’d have had Oz totally under her thumb.”

“You know what? Let’s forget about Hank communicating with anything more horrible than what’s already in his lab, and ignore you maybe having some serious latent villainous tendencies, and get back to how I’m totally going to steal and/or clone you a dodo if you take care of this report,” Tony said quickly.


	22. Chapter 22

“Coulson,” Lucy grunted, adjusting her shoulder so that her phone was jammed against her ear in a slightly more comfortable fashion. A pair of rodeo clowns sauntered past, and she suppressed the urge to sigh at the sight of a pair of fake rubber ass cheeks, complete with a red marker heart tattoo, sewn onto the seat of one’s overalls. _County fairs are the worst_ , she thought.

“Jones,” he answered smoothly. “Thank you for finally picking up.”

“What do you want? Never mind, let me save you some time.” She took a bite of her funnel cake and repositioned the enormous purple tiger under her left arm. “The answer is no,” she told him around a mouthful of sugared dough. “Whatever it is you want, the answer is no.”

“Even if I’m offering a job?” he asked.

“ _Especially_ if you’re offering a job. I’m not working for SHIELD.” A vendor selling what the sign on her booth proudly proclaimed to be ‘fried death on a stick’ caught her poisonous look and thought better of hectoring her about trying a sample.

“You’re still for hire, aren’t you? If somebody else called you and offered a competitive rate, you’d consider it?”

“Of course I’m still for hire. Just not by SHIELD.”

“Why not?” he prodded. “I haven’t even told you what we need yet.”

“I don’t care what you need. For one thing, you guys are a pain in the ass. For another thing, Fury still wants to murder me. For a third thing, you’re straight up encouraging Thor to keep thinking of me as Loki. Don’t even bother denying it. It is a dick move, and you ought to spend some time thinking very carefully about how that’s likely to work out for everybody.” A goat kid bounded past her, chased by two harried-looking 4-Hers. She felt a momentary spasm of pity for them, and the kid tripped over nothing and landed on its back with a confused, truncated bleat. One of the teens scooped it up and headed back the way they’d come, scolding it affectionately. “For a most important thing, I don’t work for people who still owe me.”

“How do we still owe you?” Coulson asked. “We did contact your ex and put the requested offer on the table. She didn’t take it.”

“Yes, I know, and I am very grateful that you didn’t make me beat that out of you. That’s not what I’m talking about.” She couldn’t hear him shuffling through his files over the bad hair-metal pounding out of the gravitron to her left, but she knew he was doing it, the same way she knew exactly which thoughtful frown was stuck on his face.

“Do you think you could give me a hint?” he finally asked. “And where _are_ you, a Def Leppard concert on a farm?”

“Got it in one.”

“Really,” he said drily.

“County fair. Same thing.”

“You’re at a county fair? Am I going to have to send the Avengers out over this? Because if you cover Captain America’s costume in sequins and rhinestones again, I’m just going to apply the cost of his new suit against the outstanding balance of whatever you’re talking about.”

“Don’t be belligerent, Coulson. And that wasn’t me.”

“That wasn’t you? Somebody decked Captain America out like a Vegas showgirl, and it wasn’t you.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I desperately wish it had been. If you find whoever did it, high-five them for me, because that is just ten different kinds of class, right there.” She took another bite of pastry. “Just as a general rule, though, if I’m not answering my phone, it’s because I’m busy, not because I’m hunkered down in a cave somewhere coming up with Avengers-oriented plots of such questionable dastardliness that they’d embarrass Wile E. Coyote.”

“What are you doing at the county fair?”

“You know how all the games are rigged so you can’t win them? Well, I’m unrigging them. Or rather, I’m rigging them in the other direction. Also, they have a magnificent petting zoo here. Did you know that there’s such a thing as pygmy goats? They have _baby_ pygmy goats. It’s funny how chihuahuas are horrifying, but goats the size of chihuahuas are just _the best_ thing ever. Oh, and they have the fattest, shortest Shetland pony I’ve ever seen. If Ragnarok is an actual thing, I’ve found the horse I’m riding into it. I figure with a top speed of one mile an hour, it might be over by the time I get there.”

“You’re unrigging carnival games.”

“Yes.”

“Why are you unrigging carnival games?”

“Do I need a reason? I feel like that’s the sort of thing I genuinely do not need a reason to do.”

“It just seems like the opposite of what you would normally do in a situation like this.”

“I need carnie tears for a spell I’m working on.”

“That’s just not true, Jones.”

“Okay, fine. I _want_ carnie tears for a spell I’m working on--”

“Also not true.”

“--because they’re better than any other sort of tears. The only thing that comes close is bankers’ tears, and while they may deserve it more, you got super-pissed the last time I crashed the stock market.”

“Yes, I did.” He sighed.

“Okay, look, if you take something that’s a trick, and everybody knows it’s a trick, and you make it not a trick, it’s like, the best trick of all,” she explained, rolling her eyes. A huckster was staring, perplexed, from a stack of rings lined up on the hardest target to the jubilant ten-year-old on the other side of the booth divider. “I’m _subverting paradigms_ and shit over here, Coulson.”

“Do you even know what those words mean?”

“If you’re in your early twenties and in a college town, they mean ‘I find you incredibly interesting and would like you to sit on my face.’ Outside of that context, I don’t have the first clue. They sound pretty fancy though, don’t they?”

“So, the unpaid bill you’re upset about,” he said, trying to wrest back control of the conversation. “You were giving me a hint.”

“I wasn’t, but I’ll do you one better. You remember way, way, way the fuck back before the dawn of time when you first beat this number out of a goon?”

“I did no such thing.”

“And you called me asking all sorts of completely stupid questions about magic?” she barrelled on, as if she hadn’t heard him. “And you put Reed motherfucking _Richards_ on the line and you let _him_ ask all sorts of completely stupid questions about magic? And you told me to bill you when I complained?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, good. Because I will give you two guesses, the first of which is what I proceeded to do, and the second of which is what you proceeded to _not_ do, about what happened next.”

“We’re a government agency, Jones. We can’t pay vendors without necessary tax information on file. It’s the law.”

“Okay, here’s the thing. You are a government agency whose budget is thirty-five percent slush fund and twenty percent Social Security payments to dead people and seventeen percent cocaine. You can pay anybody any damn thing you want, without a lick of paperwork. You can shovel a metric ton of primo hash out the back of a cargo plane into the Pakistani desert, if that’s what an invoice calls for. The only thing you have on your official budget is pens, toilet paper, and eyepatches. Be that as it may, however, this is not my first time dealing with a government vendor, so I included a W-9 with the goddamned invoice. And you know what you _still_ didn’t do? Pay the fucking invoice.” There was a long pause. “You still there?”

“You included your tax ID number and address with the invoice. That you sent us. Years ago.”

“Yup.” It was a struggle not to gloat about that one.

“Can I call you back? I need to go talk to someone.”

“Good luck with that. I think SHIELD’s accounts payable department is literally comprised of small dragons and large trolls and located in a dungeon.”

She barely had time to finish her funnel cake and watch a young booth attendant gape, disbelieving, as yet another player sank ball after ball into the arranged stainless steel milk jugs. He was half out of prizes already. Her phone buzzed insistently.

“Jones here.”

“You won’t take a job from us because we owe you five hundred dollars.”

“It’s the principle of the thing, Coulson. Though I guess at this point it’s also the principal of the thing, since I do charge a late fee of ten percent plus five percent interest on late payments, and this payment is very late indeed. So I won’t take a job from you because you _owed_ me five hundred dollars and now currently owe me, let’s see here, five-fifty at five percent is--”

“Just add it to the bill.”

“No credit, Coulson. Especially not if you’re going to be pointing me at the people I’m usually trying to drum up business from.”

He sighed. “It’s one of ours.”

“Beg pardon?” she asked sharply, shoving a string of tickets at the bored teenage girl guarding the ferris wheel. She rearranged the toy tiger so it was sitting next to her in the gondola and finished the last of the funnel cake while Coulson tried to explain.

“It’s General Ross. Banner’s missing, and our intel indicates that Ross has him.”

“Ross? General Thaddeus ‘I Should Be in Leavenworth for Personally Shooting Up Harlem’ Ross? Shouldn’t this be a pretty easy thing to take care of in-house?”

“Theoretically, yes, but the stars aren’t lining up at the moment, and I need Banner out of whatever holding facility Ross has him in as of _yesterday_.”

“I set the time machine on fire, remember? You tried arresting me for it. I can’t do yesterday.”

“Don’t be an ass,” he said firmly. “I meant it as a figure of speech, and you know it. We no longer have the luxury of watching the wheels spin on this.”

“Send in Widow and Hawkeye and a team of whatever ninjas you’ve got on retainer.”

“We need this done without casualties.”

“Widow and Hawkeye and a team of whatever nerf-ninjas you’ve got on retainer, which is admittedly probably a much shorter list than the first one.”

“And without it being traced back to us.”

“Pretty sure the nerf-ninjas wouldn’t be traced back to anyone. Forensic nerf ballistics is a science still in its infancy.”

“Jones, _please_.”

“You remember the last time you said ‘please’ to me?”

He paused for a second. “You’re still mad that I asked you to stop humming? It was very annoying, but, in light of the current situation, _I sincerely apologize_.”

“Do you also sincerely apologize for threatening to shoot me in the leg and not giving me a stick of gum even though you totally had a pack on you?”

“Yes. Now will you go rescue Banner? Without killing anyone or wearing that SHIELD t-shirt you stole?”

She chewed the inside of her cheek, and smiled at the distant sweep of lights from the city. “Okay. I want whatever it is you already owe me, in cash, plus a good delivery bar of silver. And an 8x10 glossy of the good captain in his unscheduled costume upgrade. Oh, and an 8x10 glossy of him in his regular costume, signed to Ruth Gold.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“Don’t be a Grinch, Coulson. Hanukkah is coming up.”

“Anything else?” Coulson sighed.

“The location of where you think Banner’s being held, where you need Banner sent, and as many hi-res shots as you have of Blonsky after he went all freaky and weird and car-throwing.”

“And why do you need _those_ , exactly?”

“Uh, is Blonsky currently in custody?” Lucy asked patiently, enjoying the view as her seat came back to the top of the wheel. The sun was setting, and the wind finally turning crisp.

“You know he’s not. He was just in the news yesterday.”

“Then don’t be stupid. Why do you _think_ I need them?”

“Did I not mention the ‘no casualties’ requirement?”

“You also mentioned the ‘don’t link it back to us’ requirement. So internal security gets fried, and external security gets a nice shot of the Abomination bounding off into the wilderness with a mannequin, and Ross goes tearing after someone everybody hates and maybe, if there’s a big enough investigation into what exactly the Abomination was after, he gets himself properly court-martialed this time and nobody ever has to worry about him again. You follow?”

“ _No casualties_ ,” he repeated. “None. Not ‘a few,’ not ‘keep it minimal.’ None.”

“Yes, I get it. Do you want to call someone else in after all? It’s okay. I’m not married to doing this.”

He huffed. “I’m emailing you the files now. We think he’s in Utah. If he can keep from transforming, he needs to come to California. If he can’t, New Mexico. Where do I send your precious metal brick wrapped in cash and embarrassing photographs?”

“Uh, you know what? New Year’s is coming up, too. Just send it to Melinda over in Seized Armaments at the ATF and have her stick it in with my fireworks and booze order.”

“You have an account with the ATF? You won’t take a job from us, but you have an account with the ATF.”

“I am actually taking a job from you right now, so maybe don’t start getting snotty with me about what other government agencies I do business with? I mean, I also have a library card and enjoy a hundred percent audit rate by the IRS. You want to fight about that, too? ‘Cuz if you do, start with the IRS. If I could go one fucking year without having to patiently explain why I’m pleading the fifth on my occupation, I’d be a happy camper. Not that I’d particularly _recommend_ going toe to toe with the IRS, because I’m pretty sure whoever’s in charge over there is an actual demon, since the last time I tried to break in I got--”

“Fine, fine. Point taken. I’ll send everything to the ATF. I assume they have a shipping address?”

“Close enough. They usually just dump everything behind an Air Force base, and I pick it up from there.”

“You know, I could just give everything to Thor to deliver when he drops by. He’s been trying to visit you since the last time you saw him.”

“Yes, but I’m planning on not being home for the next fifty years, and I want that photo in time for the holidays, so that would be counterproductive. And hey, look at the time. It’s ‘I have to go to Utah and rescue Banner’-thirty. Let’s stop having this conversation. Bye!” She hung up and looked more closely at the files he’d sent her. _No casualties, no SHIELD involvement, no problem_.

*****

Lucy checked her reflection in her conjured mirror one more time, then tried her voice. The image looking back at her was a dead ringer for the Abomination. The voice was convincing, too. She hitched up the beige cotton shorts keeping her from scandalizing the locals. She flexed and shifted a little, getting used to the heft of the new form, then bounded forward and through a security wall. Klaxons immediately began wailing, sending security personnel running for weapons rooms and observation towers that suddenly wouldn’t open for their swipecards. Evacuation orders that hadn’t technically been issued started blaring from speakers and blinking onto screens and appearing on phones. She kicked down a side wall, charged into a lobby, and found a security camera. She paused, grinned at it, and took a deep breath, her ears flattening back along her skull. 

“Well, if I could stick my pen in my heart, I would spill it all over the stage. Would it satisfy ya, would it slide on by ya, would you think the boy is strange?”* she sang. Coming from the Abomination’s lungs and throat, it roared and howled through the entire floor of the building. Clerical staff scrambled for cover as she launched into a pitch-perfect Mick Jagger impersonation, spinning and jerking and hopping awkwardly down the hall.

“Ain't he strange? I said, I know it's only rock 'n roll, but I like it!” she roared. “I know it's only rock 'n roll, but I like it, like it, yes, I do!”

The impersonation was marred by the occasional punch through a wall or stomp through the floor. She shook her massive shoulders. “Oh, well, I like it, I like it, I like it! I said, can't you see that this old boy has been lonely?”

She body-slammed through another wall after checking to make sure nobody was on the other side. “If I could stick a knife in my heart, suicide right on stage, would it be enough for your teenage lust? Would it help to ease the pain? Ease your brain?” She headbutted her way through a firedoor. “I said, I know it's only rock 'n roll, but I like it! I said, I know it's only rock 'n roll, but I like it, like it, yes, I do!”

She was moving slowly and randomly enough that nobody was getting in her way and staying there. The bogus evacuation orders were, for the most part, being obeyed. A few stragglers were looking from their comms to her and back again, dumbfounded. With the arsenal locked down and unresponsive to the security clearances, even most of the soldiers only had their sidearms available. If they’d expected anything--and she didn’t think they had--it had not been a one-monster frontal assault. She grinned again. It had _definitely_ not been a one-monster revue.

“And do ya think that you're the only girl around? I bet, I bet you think that you're the only woman in tooooooooown,” she yowled. “I said, I know it's only rock 'n roll, but I like it!” Another wall disintegrated around her massive fist. “I said, I knooooooooow it's only rock 'n roll, but I like it! Yes, I do! Oh, well, I like it, I like it, I like it, whooooo!”

She smashed both fists into the floor and dropped to the next level, repeating as necessary until she was on the fifth subfloor, where Coulson’s information had indicated Banner would be held. If he was here. _If_ , which was an interesting condition for SHIELD intel to include. They were generally very confident in their mistakes. Granted, it had been hastily-compiled. And granted, Ross was completely off the farm on this one. But she hadn’t been able to get a fix on him, either. There was an energy, an impression, that kind of _seemed_ like Banner and maybe a little like the Hulk. If she’d been doing this on a lark, she wouldn’t have bothered. She was being paid, however, so it was more than enough of a clue for her to go rampaging through other people’s stuff looking for him. And Ross was very much up to something out here. It would, she thought, probably be to everyone’s benefit if she put the brakes on it at least a little, and preferentially a lot. She killed the rest of the internal surveillance and passive recording devices.

“Show’s almost over, assholes,” she muttered to herself. She conjured a dummy roughly the same size and shape as Banner and capped with his mop of unruly, dark curls. Hefting it over her shoulder, she surged back up through the holes in the floor. She growled and snarled like a wild thing until she reached the outside wall, laughing wildly as a few remaining soldiers took potshots at her. Invulnerable skin was a blast, she thought.

Lucy got a better grip on the mannequin and bounded off across the desert, hooting at the top of her lungs. “Victory shall soon be mine! I am the greatest thing ever produced by the military-industrial complex, Silly Putty excluded, and I shall prove it by beating up the second-greatest thing ever produced by the military-industrial complex! I will meet the Hulk in physical combat, because of reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with insecurity about my masculinity that definitely has not plagued me since puberty! Or the fact that I now bear an unfortunate resemblance to the Creature from the Black Lagoon! And I will defeat him, because I’m better than him in every conceivable way! In this rematch between the Mods and the Rockers, the Rockers shall prevail! Even my ears are cooler than his ears! Everyone will see that he is not so incredible, compared to me! I am the gamma messiah!”

She got a surprising distance by the time she was down to breakfast cereal slogans.

“Impressive how fast you guys can move when you really want to, fake-Banner,” she muttered. The dummy vanished, and she slipped back into her own shape and clothes. She slung the stuffed tiger over her back and teleported back to the base, homing in on the vague sense of Banner-ness she’d felt earlier.

The few soldiers disobeying or suspicious of the evac commands were busy chasing the phantom Abomination into the alkali flats A handful of techs had been left behind to supervise Banner’s removal. A removal that had, as far as everyone else fleeing the base knew, already occurred. They were close to panicking at the delay, their unresponsive comms, the earlier security feeds, and their inability to radio for outside assistance as it was; they tipped over into dead faints with just the gentlest pressure from her. They’d wake as soon as someone tried to rouse them. Banner was lying on a cot in a glass-enclosed cell, surrounded by a bank of monitoring equipment and hooked into several IV drips. Lucy rolled her eyes and sheered the front wall off the cell. The monitoring equipment was summarily thrown across the room and the IVs carefully disconnected, then hurled into a heap in the opposite direction. She shook him gently.

“Hey, Bruce, you in there?” she asked. “Banner? Banner? Earth to Banner, come in Banner.” She paused, thinking. “Hurry up, Banner. If you don’t stop him, Stark is going to cook breakfast again. It’s going to be eggshell omelets, with him trying to pass it off as extra calcium. They’ll somehow be both burned and still runny. It will be horrible, and everyone else will come up with excuses for why they can’t have any. He’ll try to give you seconds.”

“He needs a rescue drug,” a soft voice said from behind her. She jumped and turned around, dropping Bruce back onto the cot. “Are you one of his friends from the Avengers?”

“Not exactly,” Lucy said carefully. The slight, dark-haired woman in the entryway licked her lips nervously and kept glancing at the stuffed animal. “But I do play one on tv! Okay, that’s not true, either. Not all his friends are official-capacity, you dig? Who are you?”

“His fiancee,” she said. She pulled a syringe and vial out of her pocket. “Betty Ross. Pleased to meet you. I think.”

“Betty _Ross_? Any relation to Boss Ross up there?”

The woman grimaced, and Lucy frowned. She’d thought Betty was on the young side, but she couldn’t have been much younger than Banner. She was probably a hair older than Lucy herself was.

“He’s my father. We don’t exactly see eye to eye about the Hulk.” She crossed the floor to kneel next to Bruce’s cot. Lucy backed up slightly, her hands out in a soothing gesture. The love and protectiveness and fear coiled up and pulsing along the woman’s nerves were almost painful to look at. “How long has he been unplugged?”

“Barely a minute.”

“Okay, easy does it,” Betty muttered to herself. “I’d rather leave him a little dopey than overdo it and risk an, uh, incident this far down. I’m sure you’d agree.”

Lucy shrugged. “The Hulk seems to like me okay, but this has been going well enough so far that I’d rather not fuck it up.”

“This counts as going well?” she asked, her voice rising an octave.

“Um, nothing’s on fire, nobody’s dead, and I’m not hearing a self-destruct countdown. So yeah? Pretty well? I mean, I basically just need to get him out of here, and we’re done.”

“You’ve got an exit strategy, then?” Betty demanded, her eyes narrowing. She pressed her lips together, grimacing as the needle slid into Bruce’s unresisting arm. She relaxed again as she started depressing the plunger. “Mine got flattened by a flying chunk of concrete and then exploded. I could really use a lift.”

“Can’t you just play dumb and get one of the techies hiding out topside to pack you up and get you out of here when the first wave of reinforcements comes in?” Lucy inquired. Bruce started groaning and twitching slightly.

“If I were willing to leave him like this, which I’m not, I could turn myself in, but I’m, uh, not really supposed to know this place exists.”

“You snuck in,” Lucy said.

“Yeah.”

“Ballsy.”

“Stupid,” Betty corrected. “I got stopped at the gate. If this hadn’t happened, I’d be in the brig getting chewed out by my dad right about now. Hell, he’s probably still having the papers drawn up for a special-supervision order as we speak.”

“Your dad sounds like a dick,” Lucy sympathized. “Yeah, sure, you can ride with us, I guess. I’m going to have to call it in before we get where we’re going, but it shouldn’t pose that much of a problem if you’re cool.”

“And if I’m not?” Betty asked hesitantly, holding Bruce’s hand.

“Bus station with a fifty in your pocket,” Lucy answered. “I get that you’re not down with leaving him alone with someone you don’t know, I do. But, you know, I don’t know you, and that cuts both ways.”

Betty considered it for a moment, then nodded to herself. “Fair enough.” She shot a sidelong glance at Lucy. “You’re seriously not that worried about the, um, _the other guy_?”

“Not really.”

“Ballsy,” she muttered.

Lucy grinned at her. “Nah, just stupid. Hey, Banner, you back with us yet?”

His eyes cracked open. “ _Jones_?” he croaked.

“Yeah, dude.”

“Do you really,” he swallowed painfully, “have a stuffed purple tiger looking over your shoulder?”

“Yeah, dude.”

“And you’re really standing next to my girlfriend?”

“Yeah, dude.”

Betty crossed her arms. “Why are you asking her instead of me?”

He smiled at her, his eyes unfocused. “I don’t think they could fit enough drugs into my system to make me _want_ to see her.”

Betty raised an eyebrow at Lucy, who gave her a beatific grin. “It’s true. I’m usually the polar opposite of helpful. People are _never_ glad to see me. Is he going to be okay to move soon?”

“Where are we going?” he asked hoarsely.

“You think Big-Green-and-Cranky is going to put in an appearance?”

He thought carefully. “No. Not for a while.”

“West coast.”

Betty helped him sit up, and he groaned, rubbing his shoulder.

“I love you, honey, but you shouldn’t have let her drag you into this,” he sighed. “She’s bad news.”

She kissed his forehead. “She didn’t, Bruce. I came on my own. I’ve just got lousy timing. Or she’s got good timing. I haven’t decided yet.”

“Yeah, _Bruce_. Seriously. Since when do I shanghai civilians and drag them along on stuff like this?”

He blinked at her. “As of, what, a month ago?”

“No, no, no. That is not what happened at all. Those civilians shanghaied _me_ ,” she sputtered. “Anyway, tick tock, tick tock, I’m on the clock. If you think you can stand up without barfing on Ms. Ross’s shoes, we’re getting ourselves gone.”

“Somebody _hired_ you?” Bruce asked, rubbing his shoulder again. He flexed it experimentally and winced. “Did they know you’d be splitting the take with a plush cat?”

“Oh, shit, am I still wearing my Superhero Retrieval Squad jacket?” Lucy looked over her shoulder and pulled at her coat before bringing the heel of her hand up to her forehead and turning back to him. “Of course I’m not! I don’t even _own_ one! Because that’s not a real thing! And because I don’t do this sort of thing for kicks! And because I’m a super _villain_!”

She shot them a manic grin and held out her hands. Betty shrank back slightly, curling around Bruce like she could shield him. Lucy relaxed and rolled her eyes. “Of course somebody hired me to bust you out of here. They were so persistent about it that they actually caught me in the middle of something else that did, in fact, involve splitting the take with a bunch of stuffed animals. Three guesses as to who would call up and badger _me_ over _you_ disappearing into the maw of the military-industrial complex, first two don’t count. Now, as I was saying, all aboard the last train to Coolsville. Please be ready to present your tickets to Conductor Hobbes upon request.”

“You finally figured out what you were doing with teleporting passengers?” Bruce asked thickly.

“Meh. Mostly I just stopped caring.” She shrugged. “But I’m not _walking_ out of here with you two, and we’ll set off every alert this side of the Rockies if we try to tool out of here in a vehicle, so you don’t have much choice.”

“Bruce?” Betty asked quietly.

“Not much other option,” he agreed, leaning his head against her shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.”

They reached out and took Lucy’s hands.

*****

“Hey, Coulson.”

“Jones. You’re not at the check-point.”

“No, I’m not. I’m close, though!” Lucy glanced over at the park bench where the pair were cuddling. Betty had helped him into the civilian clothing Lucy had conjured, and he was leaning gratefully into her arms. They were both keeping a wary eye on her.

“Horseshoes and hand grenades, Jones.”

“Yeah, yeah. A slight problem cropped up. I wanted to buzz you first.”

“Problem?”

“Well, potential problem. You kind of got an unexpected freebie on this one. Think of it as a two-for.”

“What have you done, Jones?”

“You know Betty Ross?” Coulson made a slightly strangled noise. “Of course you know Betty Ross. Well, she and I got to Banner at roughly the same time. It turns out that she did not feel entirely comfortable being left behind in the middle of a half-destroyed double-secret-probation military installation that she technically doesn’t have the clearance to know about, let alone be helping somebody escape from. I guess she’s sort of the sensible type about things like not getting caught if she can help it, which is an excellent quality to have in a girlfriend if you have a rage-based superpower. And I didn’t feel entirely comfortable about abandoning the sweet, devoted, normal-human-being girlfriend of a titanic green killing machine in the middle of a battlefield while taking him with me, because I have a sense of self-preservation. So she’s with us.”

“You kidnapped Ross’s daughter.”

“I _rescued_ Ross’s daughter. Rescued. Did I mention that it was a rescue? I don’t know if you caught the rescue part. I mean, the base was being utterly _torn apart_ by the Abomination. You know, the guy who smashed the shit out of New York City and almost murdered the Hulk? It was _terrible_. That guy’s got some issues. I think he might have plumb lost his mind, probably from all the weirdo science Ross subjected him to. I mean, there was singing involved. Singing, Coulson. It was a war crime. Half a department’s going to get brought up on charges over creating this guy and turning him loose on the world.”

“Jones,” Coulson groaned. She ignored him.

“Would _you_ leave some poor innocent...what is she, a doctor? hanging around for a murder-happy ersatz Hulk to take bloody and terrible vengeance on? If Ross ever finds out about it, I’m sure he’ll appreciate the huge solid I just did him. Like, things could have gotten biblical, were it not for my timely intervention. And I mean, okay, yeah, technically she was also rescued _from Ross_ , but there’s not a lot of evidence putting her at that base at all, never mind for her having come with us.” Lucy cleared her throat. “So, the question is, do I drop her off somewhere near an airport with cab fare and keep on with Banner, or do I bring them both?”

“She wasn’t authorized to be on the base?”

“Nope.”

“And you didn’t break her out of custody?”

“Nope.”

“Bring her with you. I’ll revise our extraction team’s instructions. We’ll handle it.”

“Cool. Catch you later, Coulson. Don’t make me send this bill to a collection agency.”

“Jones?”

“Yeah?”

“You did pretty good. This is already lighting up certain very appropriate switchboards. Don’t blow this by running your mouth off about how it was you.”

“How what was me? I’ve been fucking up a county fair all night. I won a complete collection of knock-off, non-flame-retardant Muppets and used them to frighten the livestock and small children.”

“Glad to see we understand each other.”

“For which I still expect to be paid in full, on time, as agreed upon.”

He sighed. Lucy chuckled and hung up. She turned back to Betty and Bruce and smiled back at their apprehensive expressions. “Come on, my lovelies, we’re all going to Malibu.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *The Rolling Stones. It's Only Rock 'n Roll, "It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)."


	23. Chapter 23

Thor shifted his weight, adjusted his grip on the bottle of wine in his hand, and rang the doorbell. Through the open windows, they could hear the chime, as well as the stereo and Lucy singing along to it at what sounded like the top of her lungs.

“You look so cool, you look so sweet,” she wailed. “Come on, baby, come on over, baby. It's your world, but it's my street. Come on, baby, come on over, baby.”*

The door burst open.

“ _Merry Christm_ \--” She blinked at them, her wide smile fading into confusion. “Oh, it’s you guys.”

Tony stared at the Santa hat tilting precariously on her head, and Steve sighed at the fat joint dangling from her fingertips. She arched one eyebrow at him and stuck it back in her mouth.

“Something up?” she asked.

“Your taste in Christmas music is highly questionable,” Tony said. “Even for a supervillain. Serial killers? Not Christmasy.”

“Taken out of context of the rest of the album, it could be about aggressive catcalling,” she pointed out carefully.

“Still not Christmasy.”

“Did you people _want_ something, or--”

“When you said that you had plans and could not join me, I thought that I might join you in them instead,” Thor blurted, holding out the bottle defensively. She took a quick drag, pursing her lips, and the hard look in her eyes softened slightly. She waved one hand, and the volume of the music faded significantly.

“Fine, what the hell, fuck it, it’s Christmas Eve. Come on in. Mind the guard-bird.” Libby snapped her beak warningly. Lucy took the bottle and waved them inside. Thor beamed at her. “But I swear, if you try to arrest me, they’re going to see the fireball from the helicarrier. Which had better not be parked a half-mile above us.”

They trooped in behind her. Tony’s face was carefully frozen as he took in the decor, and Steve fidgeted nervously.

“Um, Merry Christmas,” he said, clearing his throat. “I wanted to say thank you, for what you did for Banner.”

“It was most heroic. You even secured the affections of Miss Ross, daughter of the tyrant!” Thor grinned at her. “She spoke highly of your prowess and bravery.”

Lucy gave them a measuring look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t even know the lyrics to “I Know It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll.” The whole thing’s a set-up. I was at a county fair the entire time. I started a pygmy goat stampede. It was in the papers and everything.”

“Wasn’t one of those headlines ‘Local Supervillain Starts Goat Stampede to Establish Alibi’?” Tony demanded. “And I’d have to double-check with Natasha on this one, but I think when you have a cover story for a specific but unnamed incident, you’re not suppose to know exactly what you were doing when the thing you supposedly have no knowledge of went down.”

“Nonsense. My cover stories are brilliant, and there’s no convincing anybody that I wasn’t establishing an alibi to avoid suspicion for the polar bear parade I staged in Nome without first securing a permit.”

Tony stared at her. “You didn’t.”

“Of course I didn’t. That stuffed tiger got to Alaska by itself. And it’s all a coincidence. I mean, how _could_ I have? I was busy starting a pygmy goat stampede and causing heart palpitations in seniors with flaming Kevin the Frog and Mrs. Puggy puppets I bilked the ring-toss booth out of. You know, on the other side of the continent,” she pointed out. “It’s like a trifecta of shit I categorically deny doing.”

“Of course,” Steve said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Still. It’s appreciated.”

“I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get the mental image of the Abomination fronting for the Stones out of my head, but yeah. You knocked it out of the park,” Tony agreed, shaking his head. “Bruce was in a bad spot, there.” He brightened after a second. “In the spirit of comradery and Christmas cheer and all that extremely non-fighting-with-each-other-for-a-few-hours stuff, do you think I could maybe get a blood sample off the bird?”

Lucy took a long drag off her joint. “You show up to my house uninvited on Christmas Eve, you don’t bring anything, you criticize my taste in music and my ability to cover my ass during criminal endeavors that may or may not have ever happened, and then you ask if you can stab my pet.”

“That’s about the long and short of it, yeah. Do I get points for not commenting on your vocal work, at least?”

“Not anymore,” she retorted. “Why do you want a sample of Libby’s blood?”

“I promised Jan I would try to make her a dodo.”

“She has been most insistent on that score,” Thor added.

Lucy’s eyebrows shot up. “Why does she want a dodo?”

“She’s always wanted one, and now you have one, so she was hoping I could make her one.”

“So she wants one as a pet.”

“Yes.”

The bird circled the counter and hissed at the salad bowl on it. Lucy inclined her head as Libby then made her way back to the dining room table, ducked under a chair, and began pushing it to the counter. Once she had it butted up against the offending obstacle, she scrambled out from under it, jumped onto it, pulled the bowl from the counter, and began eating it off the floor.

“Is she _sure_ about that?”

“She is,” Thor sighed. “I have tried explaining the truth of the matter to her, but she will not be dissuaded. She wants one of these fearsome beasts for herself.”

Tony backed away from the dodo. “I thought they were supposed to be a little on the dumb side?” he asked apprehensively.

“Maybe this one’s just the avian version of Red Skull, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Wiping them out might have been in self defense. I’m no longer even the least bit sorry about them being extinct. I think she’s sneaking out at night and shaking down the local raccoon population for protection money.”

“So that’s a no on the blood draw?” Tony guessed.

“It would be easier just to take the damn bird. And that way there wouldn’t be two of them, so there’d be no chance of them eventually establishing a breeding population.”

“Are you saying I can just have this one? No cloning required?”

“Yeah, I’d say you’ve earned it,” Lucy said sweetly.

“I don’t like the implications of that,” Tony grumbled.

“You shouldn’t,” she chirped.

“Are you expecting other guests? We didn’t mean to intrude,” Steve offered, his eyes roving over the sizable spread. “Especially not on, uh, a supervillain Christmas party.”

“Really? Because you didn’t go very far out of your way to not intrude. But no, it’s just me,” Lucy said. “And now you guys. Speaking of other guests, shouldn’t you all be at other parties? With your girlfriends? Or your teammates? Or random hobos you saved from getting run over and are now trying to help out in an uplifting Christmas miracle?”

“It was most tempting to spend the evening with the Lady Jane, but it would have come at the cost of her being subjected to Ant-Man’s idea of a feast,” Thor said, grimacing.

“Pepper is currently being subjected to Ant-Man’s idea of a feast and threatened me with defenestration if I came back before everybody was too drunk to pick a proper science-fight with,” Tony chimed in, sizing up the dodo. “Do you have a pillowcase or something I could borrow?”

“No,” Lucy said flatly.

“I’m here for moral support,” Steve explained.

“And to weasel out of Ant-Man’s party?” she prompted.

“No,” he protested. “Unlike _some_ people, I wanted to go. I always have fun at Jan’s shindigs.”

“If it were a Jan shindig, it wouldn’t be a problem. Jan does _great_ parties. This is an all Ant-Man production. Trust us, we’re saving you from yourself,” Tony told him.

Lucy rolled her eyes and stuck the wine in the fridge. “The rolls and casserole will be done in a few minutes. Make yourselves at home. We can eat out on the porch if it’s too stuffy in here. I’ve had the windows open all day, but there’s not much of a cross-breeze this time of year, and an extra half-ton of superhero tends to heat a place up.”

“This food is seriously all for you?” Tony asked.

“I’m a huge fan of Christmas leftovers, Stark. I do the same thing on Thanksgiving. Cook a dinner for four the day of and then nothing else for a week. I guess I can give it a miss this once, though.” She rooted through the cupboards, pulling out extra plates and utensils. “Salad’s off the table, literally in this case.” She made a small gesture, and the mess disappeared. Libby hissed at her. She tossed them all mugs. “Help yourself to the wassail. Which one of you bastards is any good at carving a turkey?”

“Not it,” Tony said quickly, stepping away from the platter. He ladled himself a mug of wassail. “Holy hell, Jones, what did you put _in_ this?”

“Uh, let’s see here. Juice, spices, orange slices, hard cider, rum, and brandy. A fair amount of brandy, really.”

“You think?” He glanced at Steve. “No comment from Captain Boyscout?”

“What? This? It’s just like my mom used to make,” he said defensively, draining half his cup. 

“Your mom. Really.”

“She worked in a TB ward, not a nunnery,” Steve grunted, rolling his eyes. 

Thor tried it. “This is perhaps a touch strong, but surely not out of keeping with a feast day?”

“I can heat up some cocoa if that’s more your speed,” Lucy offered innocently, her green eyes glittering. 

“You guys spend three hundred and sixty days a year ragging on me about how much I drink, but suddenly it’s Christmas and I’m Scrooge for thinking wassail you can see through is maybe a little high-octane,” he snapped. His gaze fell on a newspaper article sticking halfway out of an envelope. “Wait, wait. _You buzzed a tree-lighting ceremony with a Predator drone_?”

“Of course not. I was dead at the time.” Lucy popped the rolls and casserole out of the oven and turned the temperature down. “And in jail. I was in jail, and dead. I was in dead-people jail.”

“You mean the morgue?” Steve asked.

“Sure. Whatever.” She slid an apple pie back into the oven to warm. “Anyway, it couldn’t have been me, because that’s where I was. Also, it was a Reaper, not a Predator.”

Tony snatched the article out of the envelope and unfolded it. “You buzzed a tree-lighting ceremony with a Reaper drone that was blaring “Ride of the Valkyries.” That is just...I don’t even know what that is. Aside from clearly premeditated. Why is there a post-it note demanding receipts for this?”

“None of your business.” Lucy took a long drag off her joint and snickered. “Made getting the star on top of the damn thing a lot easier, though, I tell you what. And it was _much_ more festive than a cherry-picker with a wreath on it.”

“Since when do UAVs count as festive?” Steve demanded, looking vaguely horrified.

Tony choked back a laugh. “When you put reindeer antlers on them and a glowing red light on the nose.” He held up the article, his index finger right below the illustrating picture.

“This is...not traditional?” Thor hazarded, looking from Lucy to Tony and back again.

“It’s an improvement on tradition,” Lucy said firmly. “My sole regret is that the only jolly fat dudes I could find willing to ride that sucker in looked terrible in a Santa costume.”

“Really? That’s your one regret in all this?” Tony asked, sipping his drink.

“Okay, I also regret that none of them managed to stay on for more than twenty feet.”

“You decked out a drone and then used it to deliver a payload of Santas.” Tony heaved a sigh.

“Not an inaccurate assessment,” she acceded. “So, who wants turkey?”

*****

“Is he going to be okay?” Lucy asked, tilting her head. Steve shifted Tony into a slightly more comfortable-looking position and deposited the comatose dodo in his lap.

“Well, he’ll probably be a little hung over in the morning, but it’ll most likely balance out when he’s too unconscious to do anything to upset Pepper or, God help him, Director Fury for the rest of the night,” Steve said, considering the likely outcomes.

“He’s in the habit of upsetting the good Ms. Potts, then?” Lucy inquired. The cab driver was giving her a stern look.

“Lady, if this turns into a repeat of last time, I’m gonna see you in court.”

“What happened last time is on Baroness Blood. I certainly didn’t decide a bunch of vampires needed to be in your cab when the sun came up,” she growled. “And if she’d bothered to _ask_ me, I could have hit them with some SPF 500 and saved everybody a lot of trouble. These guys are good for it, though. Just get his business card if he hurls all over your floor mats.”

Steve shook his head and decided to ignore that. “It’s not really anything to do with Pepper, but she and Jan are close, and it’s important to Jan that these things go well, so Tony being Tony kind of starts an unfortunate chain reaction that ends with Pepper being upset.”

“If he ever decides to do an authorized biography, that’s a pretty good title. Tony Being Tony: An Unfortunate Chain Reaction. He could even pad it out with a rebuttal from one of his science-bros explaining how it’s not actually a chain reaction if you have to keep being Tony in order to maintain it.”

“Are you sure you want to stay here?” Steve asked Thor, who was lounging happily on the porch.

“I am thoroughly content, friend Steve,” Thor called back.

“Are you sure you’re okay with him staying here?” Steve asked Lucy.

“If he gets out of hand, I’ll just ship him back to Avengers Tower,” she shrugged. “Remember, though, the spell’s going to wear off at dawn. You don’t have that bird contained by then, it’s not on me.”

“I feel like I should at least put a bow on her or something,” Steve muttered, looking at the sleeping bird. Lucy frowned.

“Hang on.” She trotted back into the house and returned a moment later with a large red sack. She unceremoniously deposited its contents in the front hall and tossed the empty bag to Steve. “There you go. Ho ho ho.”

“Uh, are those AKs?”

“Are you going to make a big deal about it on Christmas, or are you going to stuff an extinct wild animal who doesn’t fear the hand of man into a sack and get Stark back to his girlfriend before it’s time to open presents?” she asked archly.

“Be good, Thor,” he called after a moment’s hesitation. “And careful! See you tomorrow! Merry Christmas!” He looked at Lucy. “Thank you for having us.”

She spread her hands. “If the dudes in the trenches could take a day off for Christmas after gassing each other all the way through the rest of the advent calendar, I can host an impromptu dinner party and afflict Stark with forty pounds of avian spite.”

He waved and piled into the cab with Tony. Lucy turned back to the porch as the car pulled away only to find herself engulfed in a bearhug.

“Merry Christmas, little sister,” he rumbled into her ear. She tried to squirm out of his grip.

“Don’t start that up again,” she scolded him.

“But I’ve missed you,” he protested, gathering her back into the hug. “And you have helped my teammates in their time of need. It has been five weeks, and in spite of the attention of the best doctors SHIELD can provide, friend Bruce still cannot muster the ability to transform himself. He was in dire need, and you came to his assistance.”

“I got paid by the government to smash the shit out of a government facility. It had nothing to do with helping your bros,” she said, poking him. “If I have to _make_ you put me down, you’re going to regret it, Christmas Eve or no.”

He relaxed and let her pull away. “Where have you been?”

“Around.”

He snorted. “What were you doing? Coulson could find no evidence of your activities at all. It was most distressing.”

“I was busy.”

“With?” he cajoled.

“Magician crap I doubt you’d understand or be interested in,” she growled. “Drop it.”

“It was very kind of you to let Mistress Jan have Libby. I have no doubt that she will cause a great deal of trouble, but it will still please the Wasp greatly to have her.”

“The bird needs someone to keep a closer eye on her than I can. Good for Jan if she gets something out of it,” Lucy sighed. “Your people ever get Amora back under wraps?”

“No, but they are less concerned about her now with Skurge undertaking his quest.”

“Did I ever mention the fact that that just seems like an incredibly stupid way of dealing with somebody who’s fucked up? I mean, hey, it turns out he’s untrustworthy and in cahoots with someone else who’s untrustworthy! Let’s send him out on his own with no supervision and let him prove that he’s sorry! There’s no way this can possibly come back to bite us in the ass!”

Thor shot her a reproving look. “It has been a valid avenue for redemption for millenia, and it has proven effective. Far more effective, I might add, than the Midgardian methods of punishing crime that I have seen.”

“That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement there, Thor,” Lucy pointed out.

He fell silent for a moment, blue eyes resting on her face. “What if I told you that I was very interested in the magic pursuits you’ve been up to?”

“I’d give it roughly ten seconds into the explanation before you changed your mind,” she returned, sipping her wassail.

His lips quirked. “It’s a wager.”

“A wager for _what_?”

“If I am not interested, then I will do my best to talk the Man of Iron out of his plans to craft a replica of your crown.”

“He’s planning to make a replica of that stupid crown?” Lucy demanded. “Fuck, why am I even surprised? Of course he is. He’s probably already had a dress and cape made.”

“If so, he has not mentioned it,” Thor said diplomatically. “If I am interested, I would like a picture of you.”

“You have pictures of me. Dozens. Coulson’s got at least three file boxes of them at this point. Hell, he’s probably got copies of my school yearbooks by now.”

“I would like a picture of us together,” he clarified, his eyes turning apprehensive. She frowned.

“Thor, this is not a good idea.”

“If you’re confident that you’ll win the bet, what’s the harm?”

She scoffed. “I’m not your brother. Nursing this hope isn’t good for you.”

“Perhaps it’s as you say. But you have saved my life two times over, and you’ve saved the lives of my companions and my friends. I would have a picture of you that you permitted me to have, rather than a,” he paused, “a mug-shot, or you making an inventively rude gesture at a security camera, or a surveillance photo.”

“Okay, fine. Deal.” She leaned back and put her feet up on the railing. “I’ve been trying to replicate that thing that you guys do, where everybody can understand you no matter what language they speak.”

“You miss not being able to do it?” he asked gently.

“I’ve never been able to do it,” she reminded him. “It’s a little annoying not being able to fully communicate the extent of my displeasure with someone without setting their shit on fire, but I never really cared to remedy the situation until I saw you guys at work. It gave me an idea. See, humanity all used to speak the same language. It’s the mother-tongue, the root of all speech.”

“What happened to change that?”

“Combination of simple geography, time, and magic. As we spread out and stopped being within easy traveling distance of each other, it was easier to drive wedges between groups. The slang and the accents evolved. New dialects were born. Then we pissed off some very old gods indeed, and they did their thing. It was within their power to break things along the fracture lines.”

“You learned this mother-tongue?”

“If I could learn languages more effectively than a particularly clever dog, I wouldn’t have bothered with this,” she muttered. “Besides, I don’t think you _can_ learn it, not like you’d learn French or Russian or Cantonese. It’s part of the magic that wiped it out.”

“Then how?”

“I found a way to the temple of the old gods who were responsible and bribed a sacred turtle to carry me there on her back. Then I convinced the gods in question to give me the power to speak it.”

“They just gave it to you?”

“Yup.”

“They must be very generous,” he said suspiciously.

“Of course not. They didn’t realize that’s what I was after in the first place. I’d have offered to buy it off them, but hell if I could come up with anything they’d want that’s in my power.” She drained her mug.

“You tricked them.” He shook his head.

“Yup.”

“Are you planning on sharing this gift with anyone else?” he asked, amused.

“Even if I could, I wouldn’t. Everybody being able to understand each other? That’s how wars get started.”

“How did you trick them?”

“Did you ever hear about that conference in Prague where Stark got epically trashed before giving his presentation?”

Thor considered the question. “I do not believe so. I know that he used to do such things with regularity, but I have never heard of this specific incident.”

“It was a while ago, but it was such an unbelievable cock-up that it still gets featured at debriefings when henchmen fuck up really, really badly dealing with the Avengers,” she explained. “Sort of a ‘this is the guy you just got beaten by’ kind of thing. Anyway, Prague is a Czech city. And the conference was primarily presented in English and German. So naturally Tony got unbelievably drunk and decided, for some reason known only to himself and _possibly_ Ms. Potts, to deliver his presentation in barely-comprehensible Japanese. It might not have been such a disaster, but instead of his actual powerpoint presentation, he had a bunch random slides of schematics for things like weaponized merry-go-rounds, vacation photos, and scans of Nixon’s enemies list. All just cycling through in the background of a garbled speech on integrated circuits.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t. You’d actually have to _see_ it to really see what I’m talking about.” She grinned. “I gave that exact speech and that exact presentation to them.”

“No, you’re right. I don’t see at all.” His brows furrowed.

“I staged a repeat performance of Stark’s most legendary public collapse at a bunch of gods until they gave me the ability to speak to them out of sheer confusion. They were convinced that they just couldn’t understand me, not that what I was doing was incomprehensible.”

“That is...strangely clever.”

“That’s the politest euphemism for fucking terrible I’ve ever heard you use,” she commented.

“It isn’t a euphemism. I’d never have thought of it.” He frowned. “What else were you doing? You were gone for over a month.”

“That was it. It took two weeks to get there, another ten days to annoy them into zapping me, and then over a week to deliver on my promise to the turtle who helped me.”

“What did you give her?” he inquired, his curiosity piqued.

“She’d somehow got word of what I did for Neil out on the Galapagos. I think reptiles might actually be worse gossips than superheroes. She wanted to be young again, and she wanted a mate. Which sure, young again, no problem. Mate? Kind of a bigger problem. Neil _had_ a mate, so it was just a question of going and getting him. The sacred turtle had never had a mate in the first place, so I had to find a male and arrange a meeting and get a priestess to broker a little wedding once they found each other acceptable and get the surrounding villages on board with it and keep everybody away while they consummated the union.” She grimaced. “I can’t imagine how I’d have managed it if I hadn’t succeeded in getting what I wanted out of those gods. I mean, seriously. How do you pantomime and bumble through ‘Keep away, the sacred turtles are fucking’ in Vietnamese?”

“I am beginning to regret asking about this,” Thor rumbled.

“See. Told you.” She tipped her Santa hat down over her eyes.

“It is not that it isn’t interesting. It is. I just wasn’t expecting it to include a tale of congress between two turtles.”

“Meh. It had a happy ending, and everybody got what they wanted. It’s a better story than the ones where it turns into a huge fight and everybody dies.” She yawned.

“Perhaps you could go on such a quest to recover your memories of Asgard,” he suggested.

“I’ll go on a quest to recover memories of your mom,” Lucy smirked. “No, wait. Fuck, that came out wrong. Goddammit. That wasn’t actually supposed to be context-appropriate. I was kidding.”

Thor chuckled. “If you’re too deep in your cups to be properly flippant, perhaps you will finally be honest with me.”

She hitched the hat back up, eyed him carefully, and sighed. “Fine. Those pants and that shirt are too tight and make you look like a gigolo.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he protested. “And Mistress Darcy said that they were quite flattering.”

“And they are,” she soothed. “You look like a _very expensive_ gigolo.”

He burst out laughing. “You are impossible,” he sighed. “I don’t know why I expect you to be serious now. It seems like the only time you weren’t too somber by half in the years before you fell was when you were drunk. It was like we were in our youth again.”

“I’m never serious,” she told him solemnly, “except when I am. Then, I’m completely serious. Most of the time. Why is it that you’re so hung up on me being your brother? You’ve said yourself that I’m nothing like him.”

“And yet you’re also exactly like him. It’s a strange thing.” He smiled sadly. “I’ve felt...at peace since we met. I haven’t been so since we lost him. I no longer dream of his death, or the things I did which led to it.”

Lucy suppressed a guilty start. He did sometimes, and his nightmares set a crackle like static electricity across her skin. She’d taken to gently nudging him back into more pleasant memories when that happened. Not the most ethical thing she’d ever done, but there was something about him being in pain that managed to short-circuit every sensible thought she’d managed to cultivate in the past fifteen years. She wondered if he suspected.

“Have you truly felt no change in yourself?” he asked.

“I feel like I’ve completely lost control of my life,” she groused. “So either you’re coming out ahead in this journey of self-discovery, or my life was already teetering on the precipice of a tall, sheer cliff.”

“Perhaps if you remembered, things would be easier.” He smiled. “We had a very happy childhood.”

“You say that like _I_ didn’t,” she snapped. “Well, newsflash, I did. My childhood was great. My family was great. Everything was fucking great.”

He was silent for a few minutes, watching her thoughtfully. She glared out at the water, almost daring him to say something. Things _had_ been fucking great, until they hadn’t been. And even then, she’d had her magic. She’d seen a lot of people get just as fucked over by circumstance and have nothing. Or, even worse, get fucked over deliberately and then have nothing. There was a certain cold comfort to be drawn from being dealt a bad hand at random by the universe instead of getting a bad hand from a stacked deck. She twisted the ring on her finger absently. Things could have worked out a hell of a lot better, but they could have worked out a lot worse, too.

“Why the pretense with your ring?” he asked finally.

“Hmm? Oh.” She shrugged. “Ask Stark about the trouble a misdirect like this could have saved him at one point. I’ll give you a hint: his heart might not have gotten ripped out of his fucking chest if he’d had a bit of camouflage.”

“I don’t understand,” he said.

She shrugged. “My magic? It’s not something I can ever take off or shut off or stop doing. This?” She tapped the ring. “Not so much. It makes people more comfortable. And if somebody decides to fuck me over, they tend to try for the ring instead of trying to manipulate me.”

“Coulson seemed to think that you had the power to sense when people’s intentions were less than direct.”

“Yeah, but that’s pretty much everybody. And trying to monitor the thoughts of everybody close to you is how you literally drive yourself insane. It’s like a magician cliche, how many people dig themselves into a bottomless pit of paranoia and suspicion doing that.” She slipped the ring off and spun it in her palm. “Something like this splits the difference, if you can keep up the illusion.”

“And yet you gave it up to help me,” he said gratefully.

“Not really. I’m sure there’s a caveat in the SHIELD file, and it’s going to be a while before anyone hacks the system again, and they may or may not even look at the intel on me, and I’ve had the word out so hard for so long that people will probably stick with what they want to believe.” She put the ring back on. “Usually, that’s going to be that I’m not as special as I think I am. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I can be a bit of a prick when I want to be. But, insofar as it’s been or is likely to be compromised on your account, I guess you’re welcome.” She lit a cigarette and took a drag. “So, if Asgard’s as great as you say it is, why do you hang out here so fucking much? Self-exile?”

Thor blinked at her. “Lady Jane is here. I am needed here, much more than in Asgard. And I have learned much, just by living amongst you. As you observed when I was recovering from my injuries, I miss Asgard. I will not deny it. But my time here is not wasted, and I cannot bring myself to think of it as an exile of any sort.”

“So you’re slumming it,” Lucy snorted. “Figures.”

“That is not what this is,” he said firmly. “It would be much the same if I went anywhere else. I lived in Asgard as a prince all my life. I did not recognize it as the cocoon it was until it burst open. If I do not learn to make something of myself outside it, I will make a poor king when it is time for me to assume the throne, and my people will suffer for it.”

“A better answer,” Lucy acknowledged.

“And what of you? Will you eventually put away this shiftless wandering you do? Devote yourself to your craft?”

She laughed. “Oh, man. You’ve got me completely wrong, you know that? The shiftless wandering thing is _what I do_. That _is_ my craft. This isn’t me refusing to grow up, this is just me.”

“The magicians on Asgard practice in a much more serious, ascetic vein.”

“Good for them. Some magicians do the same thing here. I’m not one of them.” She shrugged. “If it’s any consolation, I could be much worse than I am. There was a point when, if I hadn’t chosen as I did, I could have been one of your serious, dour, ascetic practitioners. A regular riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, all stuffed into a creepy hooded robe. Only it would have come with the devotion of a death-cult. And I’d have been very, very good at it. The world would have been mine, to do with as I saw fit.” Lucy exhaled and ground the cigarette out into an ashtray. “But, you know, not playing midwife to the birth of a hellish new age seemed _slightly_ more appealing than being a serious person, so here we are.”

“You seem so sure,” Thor said after a long silence. “It might not have worked out at you say.”

She shook her head sharply. “I have a smattering of foreknowledge.”

“You can see the future?”

“Not as such,” she said slowly. “On rare occasions, I’ve been able to see the consequences of doing or not doing something. And I don’t mean that I can make reasonable predictions, I mean that I know with absolute certainty exactly what will happen. It’s only ever been things with a fairly dire outcome. If I’d stayed with my aunt after my parents died, I could have built an empire and taken the world. If I hadn’t started a fight with the sea scorpion, it would have destroyed the planet as we know it. If I hadn’t stopped those assholes in Bakersville, they’d have ripped a hole in reality. That’s pretty much it so far.”

“That sounds...burdensome.”

“Says the guy whose religion knows exactly how the world’s going to end,” Lucy snorted. “It’s not really, though. Some magicians get it frequently, or it’s muddled, or both. There’s a twelfth-century illuminated manuscript of Eleanor the Dark’s prophecies that has a whole-page drawing of her just throwing down her stylus and leaving the reader to figure out what everything means. It’s all three-headed wolves fighting with babies and bishops through boots full of snakes at peasants. Just complete and utter non-stop symbolic nonsense. It would have driven anyone to drink.”

Thor frowned. “Ragnarok is more of a metaphor than a carefully-mapped event.”

“A metaphor for what? The death of everything?”

“Well, yes.”

“I rest my case.” She raised her empty glass. “Merry Christmas. You should probably be getting back to your girlfriend.”

“You could come with me,” he offered. “She would like to meet you, and I think you would get on well with Mistress Darcy and Jane’s compatriot, the doctor Selvig.”

“I could, yes, but I’m not going to.” She tugged the hat back down over her eyes. “Have fun. Give her my best.”

Thor shook his head and got to his feet. “I will be back soon, and we will continue this conversation then.”

Lucy rolled her eyes and then waved as he took to the air. It had actually been somewhat nice, she had to admit, to have a full house for a few hours. It was a little like when her grandparents had still been alive. The house felt empty and cold in comparison, and she realized she couldn’t quite remember what it sounded like to have everybody’s voices going at once, anxious to catch up and eat and talk about how the trip down had been and wish each other a merry Christmas. She took a steadying breath and closed her eyes. It had sounded good. Warm. Comforting. Like family. Maybe, for once, it was enough to just remember that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Alice Cooper. Along Came a Spider, “(In Touch With) Your Feminine Side.”


	24. Chapter 24

“Lucy Jones? The president will see you now,” one of the guards informed her. 

Lucy nodded to him and ducked through the opened door, striding briskly down a short corridor and then across the wide, almost-empty expanse of a military warehouse. The empty shelving units decorating most of the interior made the click of her heels on the concrete floor echo oddly. The secret president sat at a large oak desk in the middle of a spotlight, her blank-masked face shadowed under a broad-brimmed felt hat that matched her skirt-suit. It was a very Jackie O look, she thought. She tamped down a bit of unhealthy interest. _Terrible, terrible taste in women,_ she reminded herself.

She slid into the chair opposite the masked woman, her eyes flickering over the assembled security detail. “So, is this your Double-Secret Service? Or does it come back out the other side, and they’re your Public Service? Open Service? Transparency Service?”

“Are you here about a job, Ms. Jones, or merely to amuse yourself?” the president asked, her voice rich and irritable.

“I am here about a job, Madame Secret President.” She saluted crisply. “You want the secret prime minister of America kidnapped, and I’m just the woman to do it.”

“I must admit, you seem remarkably... _chill_ about this,” she said, almost spitting the word. “I was surprised to find your name in the applicant pool. You struck me as rather a jingoist when we last met.”

“Well, your president-ness, I like a rousing shout of ‘USA! USA! USA!’ as much as the next person who considers their civic duty over and done with after casting a ballot and setting off some fireworks, but I like getting actually paid even more. Given that the exchange rate’s quite favorable, I’m more than willing to take loonies.”

“Still, I can’t help but remember how you left the Taskmaster flat during my negotiations against him.”

“He sold me out to SHIELD, and then the check bounced,” Lucy grunted. “I’m still dealing with the fallout from that deal going south. I hope you all but skinned him.”

The president didn’t look convinced. Lucy had to give her credit for communicating that effectively without the use of an expression.

“Look, we’re both busy people. If you’ve got another bite on this line that you think can pull it off, go call them. If you don’t, stop jerking me around and hand the packet over,” Lucy sighed. “Because, I have to tell you, the overlap between ‘capable of kidnapping the secret prime minister of the US’ and ‘interested in kidnapping the secret prime minister of the US’ is me.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, that is so. I mean, I get that you might not be aware of this, since they’re not really into geo-political violence or national policy or anything, but we are talking about the pinnacle of bird intelligence, here. They’ve been selectively breeding themselves for intelligence and vigor for the past two hundred and fifty years. And the cleverest turkey of that lot? Gets to be secret prime minister. The damn things could outmaneuver the weasels, if they really wanted to. So, you have to pick someone who actually _can_ trick them, or you’re not getting your bird. Of the people who can trick them, I’ll give you a hint about how many of them give any sort of shit whatsoever about your _desire_ to kidnap it, or the sum of money you’re offering in exchange for a job well done.”

“I don’t think I need a hint, Ms. Jones. I have an inbox full of interested parties.”

Lucy snorted. “You have an inbox full of people who think they’re going to put out a plate of Acme Birdseed on the center of a bullseye and drop a cage over it. You’ve got my number for when that fails to work.” She got up and extended her hand. “Kind of you to give me an audition, ma’am.”

“An audition for a role you seem awfully happy to bow out of,” the president remarked.

“Oh, is the discussion not over after all? You’ve got the same idea about your inbox full of applicants who aren’t me?” Lucy smirked. “Can’t say I blame you. I imagine it’s a rather dismal assortment. Lots of animal themes, hmm? People with way too much fur on? Fond of declaiming loudly about the thrill of the chase?”

“Not a topic on which I care to dwell, Ms. Jones. Are the terms acceptable as written?”

“I’m going to need a five percent increase for expenses and a two percent bonus for delivery more than seventy-two hours before Family Day.” She paused. “Just out of curiosity, what the hell is Family Day anyway? The day the first moose was tamed, by some dude named Family? The birthday of George Family, inventor of the chainsaw?”

“We like to think of it as what Presidents Day could have been if you hadn’t been ruled by complete and utter jackasses for the length of your existence as a country.”

“Fair enough.”

“Two percent for expenses, one percent bonus.”

“Three and two. Final offer.” Lucy stopped and cocked her head. “You hear that?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? I can’t quite place it.” Lucy sighed. “And it’s getting louder. I think we’ve got incoming.”

“Indeed.” The president gestured sharply, and half her guard peeled away and took up positions along the wall.

The east wall exploded inward, one chunk of debris flying much straighter and more deliberately than the rest before it crashed back out the west wall. The hum she’d heard clarified for a moment, resolving into something she could place even as she managed visual confirmation. Mjolnir.

“Everybody take cover!” one of the guards shouted. The two next to the president were pulling her down and shielding her as the others fanned out, keeping low and sticking to shelter. Lucy dove behind the desk, cursing Asgard and everything it had ever spawned.

“Loki! You stop this nonsense at once! You are under arrest!” Thor bellowed from the gaping hole in the wall. “We are going home, and we are going home now!”

“Oh, what the fucking _fuck_?” Lucy groaned. The president shot her a sharp look, her head tilted and shoulders squared.

“Friend of yours?” she grated.

“Baggage.” Lucy made a face. “Extremely inopportune baggage.”

“So it would seem. It would also seem that this meeting is over.” The president reached under the desk and pulled out a box of something Lucy couldn’t quite see until she started pulling the pins.

“Shit!” She scrambled for better cover as the secret president began lobbing unusually rotund grenades around the facility. Her security detail pulled gas masks over their faces with a grim efficiency.

Smoke grenades, she thought. The pungent fumes hit her lungs, and she coughed.

“Are you fucking serious?” she yelled. “Your goddamn smoke grenades are made of fucking _cannabis_?”

It was the same smoke--more concentrated, but essentially unchanged--she’d been breathing the entire time negotiations had been in session between the president and the Anti-Pope. She could already feel the muscles running along her spine and shoulders start to relax. Another minute, and it was going to be like drowning in honey.

“You’d prefer mustard gas, then?” the president shouted over the racket of Thor crashing into a shelving unit.

“No, it’s just kind of...a national stereotype, you know?” Jones called, coughing again. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her eyes. She could feel Thor starting to panic and struggling to breathe around the smoke. _Of course he doesn’t know what this is_ , she thought. _Fucking space-vikings_.

“Loki!” he shouted. “Please answer me! Where are you?”

She was moving before she realized it, his desperation touching a raw nerve as surely as if she’d grabbed a live wire with both hands. She shouldn’t be indulging this, she told herself. She should be sneaking out one of the giant fuck-off holes he’d put in the building and running for the treeline. She should be doing anything other than scrambling toward the towering Asgardian floundering his way around the wreckage looking for her. So why was she doing it anyway? _Because I’m a fucking idiot,_ she thought. _Clearly._

“Loki!” he called. “Please, answer me! Where are you?”

Lucy ducked as a crumpled metal cabinet went sailing overhead.

“I’m right behind you, asshole,” she growled, trying to get back to her feet. Her hands felt like rubber, and her skin was tingling in a way that, under other circumstances, might have been pleasant. Thor whirled, his frantic expression dissolving into one of relief as he pulled her into an embrace.

“You need to get out of here, you interdimensional jerkoff,” she mumbled into his chest. “You’re already getting high.”

“We must leave this place. I can already feel the strange smoke affecting me,” he said urgently, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her a little.

“I just said that,” she grunted, trying to focus. The edges of reality were distorting slightly, running into each other and shimmering oddly. She blinked again. _Focus, focus, focus. Losing it now would be a very bad idea_.

The racking of several guns made her turn slowly, and then a flashbang was knocking them off their feet. She landed on top of him and tried to push herself up only to find her hands crackling with electricity when she braced herself against him.

“Oh, hell,” she yelped. “No lightning indoors! No lightning ind--”

The jolt of him not listening to her threw her across the room and into a wall. She bounced off it as thunder boomed through the enclosed space, rattling everyone down to their bones. Lucy got to her feet, pain lacing from her wrists to up to her spine and then back down from her neck to her hips. She hadn’t quite been quick enough with her magic to ward off the full effects of the bolt, and she could see the delicate-looking paths of the electrical burns running from her fingers to her sleeves. She knit herself back together with a wordless snarl and charged back at him.

“Did I or did I not just fucking tell you not to fucking do that?” she yelled, her eyes blazing. He got to his feet just in time for her to reach him and grab a fistful of his tunic, hauling him around to face her. He tripped over a chunk of rubble and fell, one of his flailing arms taking her down with him.

She could feel the rise and fall of his chest under her, and it occurred to her that he was panting. Part of her brain was telling her to calm him down, stop him from gulping lungful after lungful of the bittersweet smoke, but she couldn’t quite make the connection between what she should do and what she was doing. She glared at him wordlessly, and time seemed to slow. The sound of several rounds being chambered behind her made her forget about whatever she’d been trying to prevent by calming him down.

“I suppose you have a perfectly good explanation for this?” the president asked archly.

“Um. This guy is, uh...a hero. Who thinks I’m his brother. Because of complicated alien magic and shit.”

“I see. And he’s outside his jurisdiction destroying my base because...?”

“I think he yelled something about arresting somebody? Does SHIELD have a license to operate in Canada?” She blinked. Her tongue felt heavy, and her mouth tasted of a rough, unrefined, vague sweetness. She realized that she was panting as well. _Fucking hell, I’m about a minute away from tripping balls. This is bad._ Thor groaned and tried to sit up. She shoved him back down.

“No, it does not.” The president glared at her.

“Does he know that?” she asked, second-guessing herself as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Did that even make sense? Was it relevant? “Are you robot-Lincoln’s evil twin?”

_Oh, goddammit, I am already tripping balls. Robots can’t have twins. Duh._

“You’ve drawn a hero to one of my bases. You’ve precipitated severe damage to one of my bases. I suggest you choose your next words carefully, Ms. Jones,” the president said, her voice dropping to a threatening purr.

Lucy felt her lips twist, felt her eyes narrow, and felt her mouth open. _One of these days, that phrase is not going to completely hotwire my mouth and disengage my brain_ , she thought. _Today is not that day._

“Softwood lumber tariff,” she hissed.

The president stared at her, jaw dropping soundlessly. It was a few seconds before she could manage anything in response.

“Light them up,” she snarled.

Lucy hooked an arm around Thor’s back and pulled, heaving him to his feet and throwing up as much of a shield as she could manage through the thick amber haze clouding her mind. Bullets rang off it as she steered him toward the half-demolished wall nearest them. He pulled her close, the hand around her waist grabbing at her shirt for extra leverage.

“We must fly,” he shouted over the gunfire.

“You’re in no shape to--” She yelped and ducked as the hammer came sailing back toward them from the woods. He caught it easily and pulled her against him, launching them into the air.

Lucy covered her face with her hands, tried not to say “We’re going to die, we’re going to die, we’re going to die.” out loud, and failed miserably. She was not in the least surprised when the smashed through a tree the width of a highway and went spinning out of the sky.

“I told you you’re in no shape to fly,” she groaned, spitting out splinters. He squirmed underneath her, and she rolled off him. “Wait, why are we surrounded by logs? Is this really happening?”

She looked around. A weathered door was hanging off a hinge from what was left of a wall immediately to their right. A large bronze plaque was sticking halfway out of the ground a few feet from where they’d come to rest.

“Loki, we must keep moving. Those men are not far off,” Thor said urgently, grabbing at her arm. She swatted his hand off.

“We’re not flying again. This is,” she waved her hands, unable to find the appropriate word, “bad. And...stuff. Fuck, we’re high.”

“No,” he countered, his brow furrowing. “We are on the ground. It is...all around us. We are no longer in the air. Did you strike your head?”

“Fuck, we need to get you home. I can’t fucking explain this right now. I’m...” She trailed off, staring at her hand, then shook herself and looked around around. “Shit, dude. I think we just smashed George Family’s house to matches. The Canadians are going to be very disappointed in us.”

“Home.” Thor stared at her, his eyes glazed. “Heimdall!”

“No, we’re not going to Heimdall. We’re going to Stark Tower.” She brushed herself off. “Where the fuck is Heimdall, anyway? Wisconsin? Why would you want to go to Wisconsin? It’s all cheese and snow this time of year.”

“Heimdall is not a place,” he said, getting to his feet.

“If you say it’s a place of mind, I’m going to leave you here,” she muttered, letting him pull her up.

“You’re bleeding!” he cried, releasing her hand and trying to touch her face while she was halfway to her feet. She toppled back over onto the pile of kindling with an undignified squawk. “And now you’re on the ground again!”

She glared up at him. “I hate you. I don’t remember trying to murder you before, but so help me, I might just give it another fucking go.”

“Don’t say such things,” he pleaded. “You are injured, and we have both been contaminated by that foul miasma.”

Lucy dragged the back of a hand across her face and sighed. A bright smear of blood was left on her skin. She touched her lip gingerly, then felt her nose carefully. She sighed and healed herself, sneezing a few times as the magic made every nerve in her face itch. “It was just a bloody nose, calm the fuck down.”

“Give me your hand. We must leave this place. I am in no condition to defend you, and our enemies are approaching.”

“Our enemies are whole, like _hectares_ away,” Lucy scoffed, waving her hands. _Fooocus,_ she told herself. “And it was just pot. I mean, really, really, really good pot, but still just pot. The effect won’t last for more than a day or two, tops. You’ll be fine. Here, just hold still, and I’ll get you to New York.”

He stared around them wildly. “This is how you feel all the time?”

“No, of course not. Just, like, half the time.” She picked herself up. “Okay, New York. Stark Tower.”

She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate, only to have him take her hand.

“Dude, _hold still_ ,” she hissed. “I’m trying to work here. Okay. I think I’ve got it. Hold on.”

He squeezed her hand.

*****

“What are you _doing_?” Tony demanded. The Asgardian was sprawled on the couch, his feet on the table. Lucy was curled against his side, her head resting on his shoulder and his head resting against hers. They were both looked dazed, though Lucy was walking a coin across her knuckles with perfect precision and without seeming to be aware of it. Natasha was reading a copy of _People_ on a loveseat facing them.

“Eating pop-tarts,” Thor mumbled, entranced by the tv.

“Watching _Puff the Magic Dragon_ ,” Lucy answered without looking up from the screen.

“Babysitting,” Natasha said simply, turning a page in her magazine.

“Why?” he asked, still trying to make sense of the scene.

“They’re delicious.”

“It’s hilarious.”

“They’re both incredibly stoned.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m _incredibly_ stoned,” Lucy protested. “I’m just sort of high as hell. I don’t really need a trip-sitter for something like this.”

“Your pupils are the size of manhole covers,” Tony pointed out, running his fingers through his hair. “And you’re in my living room.”

“Yeah, but that’s usually when I just, like, go to the beach and impress sharks by getting in and out of the water at will.” She wriggled her fingers dramatically. Thor handed her a pop-tart, and she chewed it thoughtfully for a few seconds before continuing. “But I figured he’d probably keep trying to fly, and then he’d smash into something else, and I know you fly around drunk all the time, but he’d probably feel really bad about the damages afterwards. And it would probably count as an act of interplanetary aggression. So I brought him here. And now we’re watching a movie, and Romanoff is making sure things don’t get out of hand.”

“You know _Puff the Magic Dragon_ is only like half an hour long, right?” he asked.

“They’ve already watched it three times,” Natasha explained.

“I still do not understand what a large pirate would want with such a tiny and clearly worthless vessel,” Thor said, his brows furrowed. “It is barely sea-worthy.”

“I still can’t figure out whether the dragon’s supposed to be wearing clothes or not,” Lucy muttered. “Maybe he just took a sharpie to his scales because it was cheaper, like those t-shirts with tuxedo vests printed on them.”

“Can you two please focus for a second? I’m trying to yell at you for getting a god high and then hijacking my living room.”

“I didn’t. The secret president of Canada did that.” She blinked. “Well, not the living room part. The getting him high part.”

“ _How_?”

“Well, like, I was trying to hammer out the details of a contract with her, and then Thor showed up and was all ‘You’re under arrest!’ and ‘Brother!’ and ‘Raaaaaagh!’ and stuff.”

“That is a most uncharitable impersonation of me,” Thor said, sounding hurt. “And you threatened to strike me down for no reason!”

“Whatever, you totally sounded like that. And I think I had a reason. I mean, I can’t remember it now, but I usually do, and I bet it was a very good one. Anyway, she got super-pissed and threw down some smoke grenades, and you know how her smoke grenades are made of out just, like weapons-grade cannabis? Turned the entire warehouse into a giant clambake. By the time I found him and got us out of there, he was tripping balls and kind of freaking out a little, and then he tried to fly us back here, and crashed us into what might have been a national monument. But I guess it was probably Canadian, so we might be cool so long as you guys apologize and offer to help fix it. I figured it would probably be better if I just teleported us back here and got him settled in a familiar environment until he came down.”

“And _Puff the Magic Dragon_ is part of this _how_?”

“Well, what do _you_ watch when you get high?”

“I don’t.”

“Well, sorry, I thought turning on AC/DC and taking him down to your lab to play with explosives like you do when you get _drunk_ would be a bad idea. Like,” she waved her hands vaguely, “a _really_ bad idea. I mean, he does that thing with the lightning.”

“You don’t sound sorry, you sound buzzed.”

“I’m not sorry, it’s just like,” she frowned in concentration, “a figure of speech. _Old man_.”

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, then relaxed his shoulders and took a few deep breaths.

“Are those breathing exercises Bruce gave you helping?” Natasha asked disinterestedly.

“A little? They were? Until this happened?”

“Friend Tony, would you like to have a pop-tart and watch this film with us? We could start it over again if you haven’t seen it.”

“What I would like is for you to not be high, and a stoned supercriminal to not be on my couch, and a highly trained assassin to not be facilitating it.”

“Why don’t you go see what Banner’s up to? Maybe you guys could like, argue about applied picophysics anomalies or make out or something.” Lucy suggested, tilting her head. “Holy shit, Honah Lee’s all fucked up.”

“I’m not going to...Bruce and I...picophysics?” Tony sputtered helplessly. “And why do you sound so surprised by that? You’ve already watched it a bunch of times.”

“I’ve only ever seen this while high. Including right now.” She blinked at him again, her eyes slightly out of sync.

“Okay, I need a drink. Nat, could you let me know when this,” he gestured at them, “isn’t happening anymore?”

“See you tomorrow,” Natasha replied. Tony groaned dramatically and swept out of the room, muttering about angry, vengeful gods and their disadvantages as roommates. He swept back in less than a second later.

“Is that me on the cover?” he demanded.

“Yup,” Lucy said.

“I wasn’t asking you, Dr. Kegstand,” he snapped. “Nat?”

“Yes, Tony, that’s you on the cover.”

“ _Why_ am I on the cover? I haven’t done anything in, um, weeks.”

“Apparently you’re dating the princess of Kazakhstan.”

“I...what?”

“She’s very pretty, and she seems to have her head on straight. Maybe you should treat this one right. It could really go somewhere,” Natasha told him, her tone serious.

“Doesn’t Kazakhstan have a president?”

“Evil overlord,” Lucy supplied.

“ _Supreme chancellor_ ,” Natasha corrected firmly.

“So where did they get a princess from?” Tony asked, perplexed. “And does she know we’re dating? Because I didn’t get the memo. Maybe Pepper set it up? If she didn’t, can I sue _People_ for libel now?”

“Only if you want to explain to the evil overlord of Kazakhstan why them saying that you’re dating a Kazakh princess would be considered libel.”

“The princess is very pleased with your relationship so far, and Jones has a point for once,” Natasha informed him.

“I don’t want to have to explain to the evil overlord of Kazakhstan why them saying that I’m dating a Kazakh princess would be considered libel, do I?” he asked, resigned.

“Probably not. Especially since they’re still pretty angry about that foul-up with their national anthem, _Jones_.”

“How is it my fault that a bunch of Kuwaiti sound techs got the wrong national anthem? That’s just, like, a normal if spectacularly ridiculous human fuck-up.”

“Which you had nothing to do with, naturally.”

“Not everything that goes wrong on the planet is a poorly-considered prank on my part. Sometimes shit just, you know, happens. And is fucking funny. But I still didn’t do it.” She started to get up, only to be drawn up short by Thor’s arm around her waist. “What is this?”

“That would be Snap-Crackle-and-Boom’s enviably tree-like arm,” Tony informed her brightly.

“Why is that your arm?” She twisted around to glare at him. “What is this even...a...Fuck, what was I saying?” She squinted at the corner of the room. “Has your hammer always been that sparkly? Like, I dunno, a fucking disco ball or something?”

“It isn’t sparkling now, you’re just high,” Natasha soothed. “Remember, the secret president of Canada attacked you guys?”

“Yeah, but it’s _really_ shiny.”

“Why don’t you forget about the hammer and have another pop-tart?” Tony asked. He turned back to Natasha. “Is the princess thing why there have been so many paparazzi hanging around outside the building the past few days?”

“Why else would there be so many of them?” she asked blandly.

“Um, Hank’s size-change-related wardrobe malfunction? Jan threatening to laser anyone who took pictures? Jan _actually lasering_ the first guy to take a picture? Hasn’t Bruce done something, too? I keep thinking Bruce has done something. Didn’t a page catch him and Betty banging in a Congressional broom closet?”

“That was you and a reporter,” Natasha said after a minute. “And it happened a couple years ago.”

Tony groaned and flopped into a chair. “This is terrible.”

“Weren’t you leaving? Is it tomorrow already?” Lucy asked. “Or has none of that happened yet? Shit. Time is folding in on itself again, isn’t it?”

“Be kind,” Thor admonished. “The man has just discovered that he is romantically entangled with a tyrant’s daughter. It must be a most jarring revelation.”

“Thank you, Thor. I appreciate the support. And I _was_ leaving. Now I want a drink and to just watch...not this.”

“This is what we got,” Lucy countered.

“That’s not all we got, and you know it.” Tony sprang to his feet again and started rummaging through the rest of the entertainment center.

“How could I know that? This is _your house_.”

He held up a case. “ _Lord of the Rings_. Extended edition.”

Lucy groaned loudly.

“You’re a wizard. You’re not allowed to not like _Lord of the Rings_. It’s like, a law or something.”

“I’m a supervillain. Even if I weren’t a huge fan of breaking the law, I’m pretty sure the evil wizard loses like a motherfucker. Be prepared for a lot of loud complaining about magic not working that way.”

“Says the woman with the fake magic ring,” Tony snapped.

“And probably a lot of loud complaining about dwarves and elves not looking like that.” She elbowed Thor in the ribs.

“Nobody complains about anything. On penalty of repulsor blast.”

“Dude, we’re currently in _your living room_. I’m pretty sure no matter who wins that one, you lose,” Lucy snorted. He scowled at her.

“She is correct on that matter, friend Tony,” Thor rumbled. “The use of any of your weapons indoors will not go well for your furniture. I have a regrettable amount of experience in this matter.”

“Of course you do,” Lucy giggled, then stopped. “Wait, didn’t you just lightning me halfway through a wall a few hours ago?”

“I have no recollection of having done such a thing,” he said, his face dopily serious. “But if I did, I apologize most sincerely. I would never harm you on purpose.”

Tony started the movie and retrieved a bottle of scotch from the wet bar. “Anybody want one? Maybe a double or a triple? Drunk people complain less.”

“Tony?” Natasha called.

“Yeah?”

“No getting them drunk on top of this.”

“But--”

“This is my day off, Tony.”

“Okay, and I respect that, but--”

“Don’t make me shoot you, Tony.”

“Fine. _Offer rescinded_.”


	25. Chapter 25

Thor wiped the sweat from his brow and leaned heavily on Mjolnir. Steve held out his hand and pulled him back to his feet, bracing himself when Thor leaned against him for a few moments longer than he’d been expecting. The rumble of more oncoming tanks made them both grimace. This level of opposition had not been what they’d been expecting when SHIELD had sent them out against the Serpent Squad.

“I do not know if we can sustain such an assault much longer,” Thor said tightly.

“Me neither. We need a better strategy. This is...” His voice died as his eyes focused on the rear ranks. “Is that your sister?”

“Aye.” Thor’s jaw tightened. “I will deal with this.”

“Thor, wait!”

Steve’s words were lost to the wind as Thor took to the sky, aiming for the lead mobile platform occupied by Viper and a contingent of confused-looking guards.

“Lucy! Cease this at once!” Thor bellowed, landing hard enough to jar the guards off their feet. Viper kept her balance and drew her sword with a snarl.

“Oh, it’s fine for you to come looking for me and fuck my business up, but it’s out of bounds for me to return the favor?” Lucy asked acidly.

“Get off my ship, the pair of you!”

“You could at least let me give you a quote, Viper. My rates are extremely reasonable.”

“I have no interest in diverting my attention from the battle at hand in order to listen to your occult nonsense.”

“Hey, Viper. Since when does the Serpent Squad have the scratch to bankroll an invasion force?” Tony asked cheerily. He swooped low and dropped a pair of crumpled robots on the few guards who were managing to get back on their feet. “I know this isn’t an AIM joint based on the sheer number of design flaws your walker here is sporting, and Zodiac hasn’t gotten this close to Latveria since the last time Doom spanked them.”

“We’ve made powerful friends over the years, Iron Man,” Viper growled.

“Since when are you snake-themed, Jones?” Jan demanded, shooting up from below the platform. The walker shuddered and lurched as a pair of small charges detonated on one of its legs.

“You will all pay for your interference! And she is not with us,” Viper repeated.

“But I could be,” Lucy protested. She drew in close, smiled viciously, and closed her hand around Viper’s wrist, pushing her blade away.

“Haven’t you ever considered doing _more_ than simply accepting the missions offered to you by monied interests? Seizing control of your own destinies? Becoming rulers in your own right?” she demanded, her voice low and insistent. “Think of it. Why pursue money when you could have that which money purchases? Why take a fee when you could take _power_?”

“Uh, Jones? Maybe stop encouraging them?” Tony suggested.

“Fuck off, Stark.”

Viper tried to edge away from her and was surprised by the magician’s iron grip. “You’re completely out of your mind. Release me immediately.”

Lucy let go and stepped back with a shrug. She turned to Thor and extended her hand, her green eyes burning. “Come, Thor. It is your destiny. Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as two people who barely know each other and don’t really get along.”

Thor’s jaw dropped.

“Oh, god,” Jan groaned. “Will you _go away_? We’ve got a serious fight on our hands! We don’t have time for whatever the hell it is you’re trying to do here.”

“Really? That seems like it might turn into kind of a problem for you.” She dropped her hand and leaned back against a support strut as the platform tilted precariously. A few of the guards started to slide off the edge. “See, I’ve got a _lot_ of time on my hands now that nobody will fucking hire me, I’ve been banned from Canada, and my girlfriend dumped me.”

“For which we’re to blame, naturally? This is a revenge team-up?” Tony sighed. “You know, of all our villains, I’d expect a little more originality from you.”

“This is not a team-up. Why are none of you listening? _She’s not with us!_ ”

“How are you not to blame?” Lucy demanded. “And it probably doesn’t really count as revenge. I think it’s more like a petty-spite team-up.”

“Have you all gone fucking deaf?” Viper demanded. “ _You_ are _not_ with us. Get off my godforsaken ship before I gut you.”

“Lady, I’m the only think keeping your ship upright at the moment,” Lucy snapped. “Maybe settle down and say thank you?”

“Lucy, I understand that you’re upset, but this is not the way to go about handling such emotions,” Thor said firmly, catching the railing as the craft shifted again. “Perhaps if you’re keeping us from falling, you might put it back on an even keel?”

“Ehn.” The deck straightened by a few degrees. “And I’m not ‘upset.’ ‘Upset’ is what I _was_ when I hit the fifth section of a thirty-part voicemail from the secret president explaining why I’m banned from Canada for life. Three ruined jobs, one ruined relationship, and three thousand personal communiques from deeply-disappointed Ottawans later, what I am is actually a lot closer to ‘livid.’ So, you know, adjust accordingly.”

“I do not think it’s fair for you to blame your decision not to tell your girlfriend that you’re a supervillain on us,” Thor protested, pulling himself back to his feet. “You should have been honest with her.”

“I didn’t decide not to tell her I was a supervillain, I _assumed_ she _knew_ I was a supervillain.”

“You know what happens when you assume things, right?” Tony asked.

“Friend Tony, could you perhaps assist Hawkeye? Your presence here does not seem to be helping,” Thor sighed.

“Weren’t you two only dating for a month?” Jan pointed out. “Are you even allowed to get that mad about getting dumped after a month? I mean, she seemed nice, but I think there’s take-out that’s been hanging around the tower fridge longer than you were with her.”

“Jan,” Thor warned. She ignored him.

“Gross.” Lucy made a face. “Maybe start writing the date on the cartons and stop comparing my love life to the incipient doomsday devices percolating away in your kitchen?”

Jan hovered. “That’s actually not a bad idea.”

Viper stared at them. “Have you all lost your minds?”

“Did I crack my skull on something and not notice?” one of her henchmen muttered to the others. “Are they really talking about take-out?”

“Bob got you pretty good with an elbow on the way down, so you should probably get checked out after we’re done here, but yeah, they’re really talking about take-out,” the guard closest to him answered. “That really _isn’t_ a bad idea, though. It’d make cleaning the break-room fridge go a lot faster.”

“Focus, people,” their captain grunted. “We’re in trouble if this platform goes down.”

“This city will fall to the might of the Serpent Squad!” Viper snapped. She gestured sharply to the handful of guards who’d managed to pull themselves upright in spite of the platform’s steep incline. Jan squeaked and dove below the walker for cover. They opened fire. Bubbles poured from the barrels. One enterprising woman drew her sidearm. To her great disappointment, pulling the trigger resulted in a volley of bright orange aerosol string.

“Not without a boost from me, it won’t.” Lucy buffed her nails on her lapel and raised her eyebrows. “Now let’s say we blow this popsicle stand and head to Georgia? State, I mean, not country. The Macon DMV is housing the Cosmic Cube, and I bet we could--”

“Stop offering to assist these villains, Lucy!” Thor admonished, pulling himself back onto the deck. “Would it ease your temper if I apologized?”

“Well, there are two Canadians writing me outraged emails as we speak, I haven’t gotten laid in weeks, and nobody is taking my calls because you have no idea what jurisdiction even means and nobody wants a fucking hammer to come flying through their ceiling in the middle of a meeting, so...not really, no. Though if you could aim for one of the billboards with my contact information on it the next time you’re in the mood to aimlessly destroy shit in Canada, I’d appreciate it.”

“Can you not consider this opportunity to start anew instead of continuing to commit criminal acts as a good thing?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“What if I paid you to go have this Jerry Springer moment somewhere else?” Viper growled. 

The Hulk’s roar echoed off the surrounding buildings, and a tank sailed overhead and crashed into a storefront.

“I could take care of that for you, and you’re offering me money to just go away,” Lucy said flatly.

“Yes.”

“You fucking people, I swear. World on a platter, and you want me to get out of your way so you can take over Bulgaria,” she sneered at Viper. She nodded after a moment. “Fine. I’ve got bills to pay, same as anybody else. How much are we talking?”

“We are not finished here, Lucy. This is not like you. You must tell me why you have done this,” Thor said firmly.

“Oh, got to hell. This is _exactly_ like me. Which you would know if we’d spent more than like, a week around each other.” She rolled her eyes. “And I haven’t done anything. In case you didn’t pick up on it, the offer on the table is to _not_ do something. Because some people have tiny dreams and no ambition.”

“Behind you!” Thor yelled, pointing. Viper’s knife slashed through thin air.

“Tiny dreams, no ambition, and less sense,” Lucy amended, appearing on the other side of the platform, easily standing perpendicular to the wildly tilted deck. “I’m a magician, darling. We’re really not that easy to stab. I promise.” The woman glared at her. “We’re very easy to piss off, though.”

She snapped her fingers, and everyone barely clinging to the platform suddenly went sliding off it.

“What did you do?” Thor demanded, adjusting his grip on the railing.

“Do you know what a friction coefficient is?”

“No.”

“Then magic. I did magic.”

“I’m not an idiot, Lucy,” he grumbled.

“Debatable. Even if it weren’t, though, I’m not going to stop to give you a physics lesson in the middle of a battle,” she snorted, letting herself slide down the platform and hopping onto the railing. “It just isn’t _done_.”

“Why are you doing this?” he sighed. An explosion rattled windows along the square. “Speak truly.”

“Because you’ve wrecked my fucking career, and you don’t even belong here. Because I’m bored and irritated. Because I can. Because--oh, _fuck off_ , Banner.” A massive green blur crossed Thor’s line of vision and then was gone, taking Lucy with it.

“Need a hand?” Tony asked. He darted down to pluck Thor from the walker as it began its final collapse with a shriek of tortured metal.

“I should assist the Hulk...”

“Nah, I think he’s got this. Never mind the tanks all mysteriously going kind of bumper-car on each other when Viper tried to stab Jones. Is she drunk?”

“She didn’t seem it, but it can be difficult to tell with her,” Thor said, trying to adjust his grip on Tony’s armor. “Where are Natasha and Clint?”

“Firing explosive arrows and RPGs at the tanks.” Tony looped an arm around Thor’s back and held steady while the Asgardian threw his free arm over the suit’s shoulders. “Steve’s on the comm trying to convince SHIELD that this is all actually happening and that he hasn’t just gotten hit with Captain Kesey’s brown acid again. I don’t know if they honestly don’t believe him or if they’re just trying to weasel out of sending back-up appropriate to this threat-level. At least they didn’t hang up right away like when Jones dumped us off in the middle of that Korean dong park.”

“Truly, I do not think that your method of explaining our predicament helped,” Thor admonished him. “Nor was our cause assisted by you voicing the same complaint to Agent Hill as you do to Lady Pepper after board meetings. I cannot blame the deputy director for thinking that you referred to Senator Stern.”

“Still. You’d think they’d be used to this sort of call by now.” Tony scowled. “Not to mention, I did explain that we were _literally_ looking at a five-foot tall penis with a stupid face. I don’t know how much clearer I could have been.”

Thor snorted. Tony guided them clear of the collapsing mobile unit only to spot Lucy and a no longer hulking Bruce on a nearby rooftop.

“Bruce, buddy, you okay?” he called.

“The stoned wizard giveth, the cranky wizard taketh away,” Lucy yelled back.

“Shit, you didn’t break him again, did you?” Tony snapped. “Bruce?”

“I’m fine, Tony,” Bruce grumbled, folding his arms over his bare chest and glowering at her. Tony wobbled toward them, trying to balance Thor so that his stabilizers could compensate for the extra weight.

“He’s fine, Tony,” Lucy confirmed. “Half-naked, but fine.”

“How do you keep doing that?” Bruce demanded.

“Keep doing what? Getting your shirt off? Pretty sure that one’s on you, dude. Maybe you just hate shirts?”

“ _Changing_ me,” he growled.

She shrugged. “It’s easy. When you’re you, you want to be the Hulk. When you’re the Hulk, you want to be you. You just poke the right spot, and over you go.”

“Real scientific there, Jones.”

“Okay, it involves an Eisenstein-Rosencrantz Bridge and kajigawatt lasers.”

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose. “Wow.”

“And now you know more or less how I felt the last time Pym started hypothesizing about magic.”

Thor frowned. “I don’t understand any of what you just said.”

“I’d be more worried if you did,” Bruce assured him. “Why are you here, Jones?”

“Shouldn’t you have figured that out before doing a flying tackle of doom off a teetering super-tank on legs?”

“Hulk,” he reminded her.

“I’m here,” she said, glancing at her phone, “because I’ve got another five minutes to kill before I’m due in Hell.”

“I forbid you to return to the underworld,” Thor said sharply. Tony dropped him gently onto the rooftop.

“Well, _I_ forbid _you_ to wear shirts that are two sizes too small,” Lucy retorted. “So there.”

“Don’t you dare. Thor can wear whatever size shirts he likes,” Jan said, diving in for a flying tackle. She moved through where Lucy had been and bounced off the roof at speed. “Ow.”

“Magician,” Lucy pointed out.

“Asshole,” Jan shot back, picking herself up.

Thor blushed. “At least stop changing Bruce without his permission. It is an extremely rude thing to do, and he deserves better treatment from you.”

Lucy shrugged slightly. “I’ll think about it.”

“We’ve got a clean-up to get back to, people,” Tony reminded them. “You gonna keep your nose out of it this time, Gandalf?”

“As lovely as it was getting to see your shit get all fucked up for no real reason for a change, I have business to attend to. Have fun getting those tanks under control.” Lucy gave them a short bow and vanished.

“I don’t suppose you guys have an explanation for why Hawkeye just disappeared into thin air?” Natasha demanded over their comms.

Jan crossed her arms. “So, I think we can officially move her off SHIELD’s villain roster and onto ours now. Great going, Thor.”

*****

Clint dropped into a crouch and nocked an arrow, looking around wildly. Jones tilted her head at him, and he dropped back a pace at the glitter of her eyes. She had the look of someone who wasn’t quite in control; it wasn’t a look he cared for much.

“I probably should have checked on this before I borrowed you, but you do use guns, yeah? The archery thing is preferential rather than obligatory?”

“Where are we?” he demanded.

“Hell. Or rather, where Hell used to be before I-10 plowed through it.” She cracked her knuckles.

“Send me back.”

“Nope.”

“I’ll tell your brother on you,” he threatened, keeping his tone light. There was no cover available, and he didn’t think he could take her in a straight fight.

“I don’t have a brother. Only child. Just me, myself, and I. And, between you and me? Encouraging the alien prince to keep thinking of me as his dead sibling is really not the best idea SHIELD’s ever come up with,” she snapped. “So, guns? Yes, no, maybe?”

“Yes, I can use a gun. SHIELD wouldn’t exactly keep me around if I couldn’t shoot a gun. Why are you asking?”

“Because I need you to cover me while I perform my good deed of the year.” She jerked a thumb at the squad of storage containers nearby. They were draped in camouflage fabric and locked but unguarded.

“If there was anybody here, they’d have opened up on us by now,” Clint sighed. “Get me back to Bulgaria before I have to shoot you just as a matter of principle.”

Lucy groaned. “Peasants, the lot of you. There’s not going to _be_ anybody here until I touch the door. Once I do, the guardians are going to pop up and try to tear the dick off anybody in their line of sight. I need you to keep them off my back long enough to shut that shit down and get the artifacts causing it contained.”

“You need me specifically?” he asked skeptically.

“I need someone who’s not just going to shoot me instead, who’s not going to tempt me to shoot them, and who doesn’t have weaponized puppy-dog eyes at their disposal. Bonus points if you getting maimed or killed doesn’t start an interplanetary war. Not to mention you were _right there_.”

“How could I possibly refuse such a perfect calling?” he grunted.

“See? Completely suited. Let’s go.” She tossed him a shotgun and started for the center container.

“Wait, wait, wait! That was sarcasm! I was being sarcastic.” Clint sprinted around her and stopped, holding up his hands. “What the hell is going on, exactly?”

Lucy gave him a level glare and took her time lighting a hand-rolled cigar. He coughed and waved the smoke out of his face.

“Yeah, I’m not too fond of ‘em either, but shit like this, you gotta do right,” she sighed. “Get the unpronounceable deities on your side instead of your opponent’s.” She began to pace back and forth, her eyes on the shipping containers. “Okay, so. What the hell is going on here, _exactly_ , is that some cockmongers robbed a tomb. And that tomb happened to be like, not _the_ worst tomb you could ever rob, but still a pretty fucking bad tomb to rob. You with me so far?”

“Am I going to get killed and/or cursed by a mummy?”

She stopped moving and pursed her lips. “Well....Define ‘mummy.’”

He stared at her. “Can you give me one second? I need to text an apology to one of the fortune-tellers from my circus days.”

“Sure.”

“That was a joke,” he explained.

“Maybe it shouldn’t be,” Lucy said, snickering. “Maybe if you apologized, she’d lift that curse.”

“What curse?” he snapped.

“You know what curse.” Her eyebrows quirked up briefly. “Am I gonna have to spell it out?”

“That’s because of a curse?”

“Either that or riding unicycles too much. Or maybe just from drinking the water in Texas.” She shrugged. “But I mean, if it was me, I’d be apologizing just in case.”

“Fucking magicians,” Clint muttered. “What happens if this robbed tomb just waits for a SHIELD contingent to come out, load it onto some flatbeds, and put it back where it belongs?”

“Wholesale slaughter of not-so-innocents? Fuck, with that much blood slopping all over the place, they might make it to the next township and start on the actual innocents.” Lucy tapped her chin. “Or if they figure out how to drive an eighteen-wheeler. We’d really be ten kinds of screwed then. They could go, like, _anywhere_. It’d be a rolling _empire of doom_.” She waved her hands dramatically, then paused and repeated the gesture a bit more critically. “That really _would_ look better if I was wearing long floppy sleeves, wouldn’t it? Hmm.”

“It looks fine just the way you did it,” Clint sighed, rubbing his neck. “I don’t think you need to worry about the mummy figuring out how to work a truck.”

“Well, aren’t you just super-complimentary today?” Lucy asked, smiling. “And why not? They’re old, not stupid. If your average teenager can figure out the basics of not driving off a cliff, I’m pretty sure the cream of ancient Mesoamerica can learn by observation.”

“Man, you really should have brought the Hulk or Cap with you on this one.”

“No, I really, really shouldn’t have. I have no fucking clue what would happen if super-serumed or gamma-irradiated blood got thrown into the mix here, and I’m not in any particular hurry to find out.”

“That doesn’t sound like you at all,” Clint grumbled.

“Of course it does. I’m the very model of a responsible adult.”

“I seem to remember you shouting ‘For science!’ and chucking a bag of oranges into the demo arc reactor at the last Stark Expo,” he said. “Now, I’m not and have never been a scientist, but I’ve spent a lot of time watching Bruce at work, and that seems...less than responsible. It’s more like Tony when he’s on an engineering streak, which is definitionally irresponsible.”

“Yes, admittedly, it might have _looked_ irresponsible. But those were all _known_ variables, Barton. I’m not going to go around feeding dark magic and old gods with the products of super-science. This isn’t the ‘40s. We have some safety standards,” she said firmly. “Not to mention that it took me like, a whole fucking week to put this lady’s daughter back in the box she crawled out of, and a) the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in that lineage and b) nobody had the poor life skills to go slitting their co-conspirators’ throats at the kick-off of that little outing.”

“If this thing is so dangerous, how did it get here?”

“They trucked it in. It wasn’t an active menace until the co-conspirator throat-slitting happened,” Lucy told him, drawing a finger across her neck. “Most of this magic is primed or fueled by blood sacrifice. Two half-rate Indiana Joneses worth of blood sprayed everywhere, and the lady’s awake and kicking and setting her minions on the remaining guys.”

“And I get to hold off said minions with a shotgun while you try to, what, send their mama back to sleep?”

“Pretty much.”

“Great. What’s it loaded with, rock salt?”

Lucy puffed on the cigar. “Why on the gods’ green earth would I load a shotgun with fucking rock salt, Barton?”

“It’s...good for shooting unclean spirits?” he managed.

“You’ve been watching way too much tv.” She shook her head. “It’s loaded with dragon’s breath rounds.”

“Dragon’s breath,” he repeated.

“Yeah. Now come on, I don’t want to be hanging out here all day.”

“You are aware that those rounds aren’t exactly close-quarters friendly?”

“I’m fireproof, they’re not, we’re good.”

“I’m not either.”

“Okay, look. Just, like, as a ground rule?” she said, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “Don’t let the _murderous undead_ hug you after you _set them on fire_. Not rocket science. Let’s go.”

“You’re insane. You realize that, right?”

“I...how the hell do you figure?”

“Have you given any serious thought to this? You’re just going to go charging in with one person on your side and hope it works?” Clint raised his eyebrows. “Let me call SHIELD, we’ll set up a perimeter and contain it. You know, just Area 51 the whole thing. Done. Game over.”

“Oh, that works where you’re from? See, where I’m from, that’s how you get unguarded supply depots full of nerve gas that everybody forgot was there and radioactive jackrabbits contaminating half of Washington. That,” she pointed at the container, “is a threat. A serious, grave, immediate, etcetera threat that, left to its own devices, will just grow in magnitude until we’re all building ziggurats and killing people to make the sun keep going. I am dealing with it _right now_ , before it gets any bigger, because that is the sane-person thing to do. And I am asking you to help.”

Clint took a breath, ready to argue, and then deflated. “Fine. What are they going to look like when they show up?”

“Desiccated humans, very fast, probably armed with daggers. Light them up and get out of the way. There shouldn’t be more than twenty.”

“Twenty? Two-zero?” He stared at her.

“Don’t be such a baby. Thirty seconds in, I’m sure they’ll all be heading for me. Easy pickings.”

“And you’ll be doing what while I’m taking potshots at the supernatural with ten-to-one odds against?”

“Taking down the wards, digging up the roots, bundling the lady back up, and relocating this party to Mexico.”

“What if, theoretically speaking, I’m wanted for five counts of plausibly-deniable homicide in Mexico?”

“Don’t go to Mexico, then? I mean, you’re not coming with me. I’m not bringing you along for the ride. Just, like, call SHIELD for a pick-up once these shipping containers aren’t here anymore or something.”

“You do realize that this shotgun doesn’t have twenty rounds in it, right?” Clint tapped the stock.

“Unlimited reloads.” She shrugged when he looked at her uncertainly. “It’s a minor enchantment, and it seemed like a wise investment.”

“So you could, I don’t know, make it so my quiver never runs out of arrows?” he asked.

“Well, sure. But if you never ran out of arrows, how would Natasha swoop in at the last minute and save you?”

“Widow and I aren’t--” He scowled at her when she wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. “Stop that. You’re trying to get me killed here, at least let me die with my dignity intact.”

“Too late for that, dude. Your codename’s a drunken surgeon from a ‘70s dramedy.”

“No, it isn’t, it’s...” Clint rubbed his temples for a second. “Fine. I give. Let’s go fight the undead monsters and teleport to Mexico.”

“Really?” she asked, her eyes narrowing at his sudden change of heart.

“I want an enchanted quiver, though. Fair’s fair. If I get shanghaied into helping you out on a side project like this when I should be with the Avengers, I’m taking home hazard pay.”

“Deal. Once I’m done with this bullshit, I’ll magic up your stupid quiver. Let’s do this before you change your mind or I die of boredom.”


	26. Chapter 26

“Burgas is still on fire, the Serpent Squad made a clean getaway, and you let a rogue wizard steal an Avenger right out from under your noses,” Phil sighed. “Are you _trying_ to give Fury a coronary?”

“It’s Jones. I’m sure she’ll bring him back eventually,” Tony offered.

“Tell that to Dr. Thomas.”

Natasha frowned. “Wasn’t that voluntary?”

Phil shot her a look, and she crossed her arms and arched an eyebrow in question.

“Can’t we track his card?” Hank asked.

“It’s resolving to Antarctica,” Natasha explained. “Same as Jones’s cell always does. The location has been verified as false.”

“So what, we just have to wait until she cuts him loose?” Jan asked, frowning. “There’s no other way of tracking him?”

Phil’s eyes strayed to Thor for a moment, and the Asgardian shook his head. “I am sorry, friends. I can only sense her immediate presence, and it does not seem to work consistently. I cannot do the same when she is at a distance.”

“You can what?” Hank demanded, his brows furrowing.

“Weak psychic link,” Tony prompted breezily. “We think, anyway. You remember? It’s been intermittent since the incident involving the involuntary-intoxication-related national monument destruction with our neighbor to the north?”

“The what?’

“This was all covered at the last team meeting,” Steve sighed. “I know you were in Wakanda working with Panther, but we take minutes for a reason, Hank.”

“We?” Jan asked archly.

“Jan takes minutes for a reason, Hank,” Tony corrected. “And look, guys, I’m sure he’s fine. Probably not exactly where he wants to be right now, but fine. Jones doesn’t kill heroes, remember? And she fixed his arm, right? And she’s got a huge chip on her shoulder about stuff she’s done getting messed up? And it’s Hawkeye. Is he ever not two steps ahead of everybody but Nat? I’m sure he’s fine.”

“Yeah, but I’d still feel better if we knew where he was and could _go get him_ ,” Jan muttered. “Do we have any idea what Jones has been up to? Likely bases of operation?”

“She’s pretty much been crabbing about being blackballed and arguing with Quebecois DJs, so no leads there,” Steve said. “And I’d like to state, for the record, that if we’d gotten the first responders we requested, when we requested them, that fire would be contained by now. How many times does this have to happen before the SHIELD communications department stops making me go through five verification stages in the middle of a fire-fight? We were formed specifically to deal with unusual and non-standard enemies. Occasionally that is going to entail a giant snake-man, a gang with an intensely questionable choice of theme, Thor’s relatives, or all three. Can they revise the procedures so that accurately reporting those encounters doesn’t result in an automatic hang-up? This is costing innocent bystanders their homes and businesses.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Cap.”

“Thanks, Phil. I’m still not sure why they’re so antsy about prank calls on a secure line like that, anyway. I can understand being worried about security breaches, but...” He trailed off as Phil directed a stern look at Tony. “Oh. I probably should have seen that one coming, huh?”

“It was _one time_! And I was incredibly drunk. And _dying_. And you’d just threatened to taze me and leave me to drool on an incredibly expensive carpet if I so much as looked out the window.”

“Drool doesn’t ruin carpets, and that is an exaggeration,” Phil said. “Did Jones say anything about where she was going or what she was doing? Anything at all aside from harassing Viper?”

“She said she was going to hell, and she said something about a DMV in Macon,” Jan supplied. “I don’t think she was serious, though, and I’m not sure why Hawkeye would get dragged along even if she was.”

“There’s no telling why she does any of the things she does,” Natasha snapped. “Coulson, isn’t there a Hell in Norway? Wasn’t there a top-secret HYDRA base near it during the war?”

“There was, but it was completely demolished pretty early on,” Steve told her. “It was too far from friendly territory to adequately defend, and we leveled it.”

“I’ll get surveillance on it just in case they’ve rebuilt under our radar,” Phil said. “It’s a long shot, but it can’t hurt to check.”

“Especially since Clint will need assistance if my sister has enlisted him in a private fight with HYDRA,” Thor sighed. “I will speak with her at length about this the next time we meet.”

“No offense, Thor, but every time you do that, she seems to target us a little bit more,” Tony pointed out. “Maybe your family bonding techniques could, uh, use a little bit of work.”

Natasha drummed her fingers against the table and chewed her lip. 

Steve caught her expression and cleared his throat. “You have an idea, Natasha?”

“Maybe,” she said slowly. “Phil, you remember the experiments with remote viewing?”

“The ones that never went anywhere?” Tony scoffed. Everyone glared at him, and he subsided slightly.

“Thor, would you mind if I borrowed you for an experiment? I’d like to see how far this link of yours can get us.”

“Not far, I’m afraid. As I said--”

“It’s not consistent, I know. But that’s what information you can consciously access. There may be a lot more that you know, but you don’t know that you know it,” she explained.

“I will do anything you think might be of use,” he said solemnly.

“Nat, do you know anything about magic at all?” Tony demanded.

“What’s to know?” Jan snorted. “It works or it doesn’t. The scan for that HYDRA base turns something up, or it doesn’t. Your weirdo satellite scans find something, or they don’t.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said quickly. “I have no knowledge of any ‘ _weirdo satellite scans_ ,’ be they mine or anyone else’s.”

“Tony, labelling a folder ‘Superporn’ wouldn’t keep my grandmother from clicking on it. It’s not an actual security measure.”

“Leaving aside the non-existent satellite scans, it’s not supposed to be a security measure. That’s what all the _actual security measures_ you’d have to bypass to get to that drive are supposed to be.”

Natasha made eye contact with Thor and tilted her head at the door. He nodded, and they slipped out while Jan distracted Tony.

“Okay, setting your password to ‘science-bros_before_science-hos’ and your secondary password to ‘supergenius’ and your tertiary passcode to a picture of Reed matched to the phrase ‘bite me’? Not great security measures, Tony.”

Phil rubbed his temples, and Bruce looked from Jan to Tony before silently padding out after Natasha and Thor. Tony blinked at her, torn between denying everything and giving up.

“Those sound like fairly solid, if extraordinarily petty, security measures to me, Jan,” Steve offered tentatively.

“Thank you, Steve. What did you do, slap a hex on my machines? And how did you get around the thumbprint and retinal scanner?”

“If I told you that, you’d only fix those problems,” Jan said firmly. “Maybe next time you’ll remember that operational security doesn’t just mean making sure,” she made little quote signs with her fingers, “people can’t guess your passwords and get around your machines.”

“Did you just air-quote at me? About my security systems? That’s it, Wasp. It’s on. By the time I’m done with the tower, it’s going to be Fort Knox.” Phil started to say something, and Tony rolled his eyes. “The _metaphorical_ Fort Knox, not the literal Fort Knox that’s been successfully broken into three times in the past month.” He looked around. “Where’d everybody go?”

Steve feigned surprise as he scanned the room. “I didn’t notice anyone leaving. Coffee break?”

“They’re already running Nat’s experiment, aren’t they? Why do I always fall for this?” Tony muttered, stomping out. “They’re probably not even writing anything down.”

“I’m sure Bruce is on it,” Hank soothed, following him.

“Do I even want to know how you bypassed all that stuff?” Steve asked when he was sure they were out of earshot. Phil chuckled, and Jan blushed a little.

“I didn’t,” she confessed. “You know how Tony’s lab is always a complete disaster area?”

“Yeah?”

“I snuck a tiny camera into one of the component piles that faces his main workstation for a week, then retrieved it and scanned the footage.”

“Clever,” he admitted. “Do I even want to know why?”

“It was the week he locked us all out of JARVIS’s video library and changed the wifi password. I was bored, so I figured I’d stockpile some ammunition.”

“Huh. I didn’t want to know why, after all.”

She punched him playfully in the arm. “Come on, don’t give me that look. You missed the wifi so much you spent that whole week camped out at the library.”

“I was volunteering! It was National Library Week!”

“Oh my god, you are such a boy scout.”

“Jan, he’s Captain America. Of course he’s a boy scout.”

“I’m going to go see if Natasha needs Tony distracted again,” Steve sighed. “Let us know if surveillance finds anything in Norway.”

*****

“Oh my god oh my god oh my god,” Lucy howled.

“What? What is it?” Clint demanded, targeting one of the last guardians. The smoking remains of the others were scattered around them. She hadn’t been lying when she said they’d be fast, but she hadn’t been wrong when she’d guessed they’d target her once they realized what she was doing. The magnesium round produced a wash of flame, and the undead warrior shrieked in anger as it engulfed him.

“My fingers are in her brainpan. This is _so unbelievably gross_ I cannot even begin to describe it,” she shouted back. “It’s _soggy_. It’s like soggy fucking large-curd cottage cheese. I can’t even--”

“Just do what you have to and get her contained,” he yelled. He didn’t want to picture the mummy’s skull contents. It had been bad enough when the carefully-wrapped bundle with its carefully-placed jade-chip mask had unfolded into something halfway between a skeletal panther and a skeletal woman.

“Ugh. The fucking things I do for fucking humanity.” She stretched her head back out of reach as the mummy swiped at her face, growling. “ _Klaatu barada necktie_!”

“Those aren’t the right words, Jones,” he warned, aiming for the last guardian.

“It’s the thought that counts,” she snarled, wrestling the mummy to the ground. “Spells that count on the precise repetition of certain syllables nobody can understand anymore suck rhinoceros balls!”

“Just get it done!”

“I’m trying, I’m trying,” she panted. “Keep fucking shooting, goddammit. I don’t exactly have a free fucking hand here, Barton!”

Clint caught the last guardian in a blast of fire, incinerating its abdomen and upper legs. It crashed to the floor with a hiss. He kept the shotgun at ready and looked around, expecting another wave.

“Fucking hell, why does cinnabar have to be so slippery?” Lucy grunted, securing one of the mummy’s hands.

She pressed the mummy to the floor and pinned her wrists together before beginning to intone something Clint couldn’t catch. The mummy growled back at her in the same language, and the funeral cloth began winding back around the mummy’s torso. He fell back a few paces, almost out of the shipping container. The scorch marks from Lucy burning away the hieroglyphs painted in blood along its walls and his own ammunition had thoroughly blackened the interior. 

There was a sharp crack followed by a silence that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

“Out! Get out! Fall back! Now, now, now!” Lucy barked. 

He obeyed automatically, his feet moving before his brain had finished processing the command. The patch of land warped and reeled in front of him, pitching him back. When he scrambled to his feet, they were in the middle of a lush forest. He flattened himself against the ground, his fingers digging into the soil and his heart hammering against his ribs, as a fireball erupted from the container.

“Jones?” he called after a few moments of quiet. He felt the back of his head and grimaced at the patch of singed hair that covered a quarter of his skull.

“Motherfucker,” she groaned. “Why are you still here?”

“You didn’t give me enough time,” he answered, pushing himself up. The shipping containers had been melted through, and the remaining structure was twisted and warped by the heat. Lucy sat up painfully. “Uh, you have a knife in your chest.”

“Yeah. Hurts like a bitch,” she informed him. She pushed her hair out of her eyes, froze, and then stared at her gore-covered fingers. “Fuuuuuuuuuuck. I have mummy brains on my face now, don’t I?”

“As disgusting as that is, I would really be a little more concerned about the knife in your chest,” he pointed out.

“I know, I know, that’s where I keep all my organs,” she grumbled. She prodded gingerly at the weapon.

“Shouldn’t you be more...freaked out about this?”

“I’m a combination of relieved that I got rid of the mummy before I started bleeding, because _that_ wouldn’t have been fun, and in shock that I’ve been stabbed. I think freaked out comes in a few minutes.” She coughed and winced. “Okay, so, let’s see here. Knife out, lacerations closed, blood put back where it came from...”

“Are you actually in any shape to do that?”

“I wouldn’t have gotten very far in life if I couldn’t survive the occasional stabbing, Barton,” she said, flopping back down. “It’s never really what I’d describe as fun, though. Hell, I’m sure you’ve been stabbed a few times. You know what I’m talking about.”

“Nope.” He picked his way closer.

“Seriously? How’ve you managed to avoid getting stabbed, like, ever?” she demanded. “The only qualification for your co-workers is that they be slightly too moral to sign on with Murder Inc. You can’t get a candy bar out of the snack machine without crossing paths with some greater metropolitan area’s principal stabbist.”

“Well, the keystone of my strategy is not going on little diatribes about how I’m surrounded by amoral homicide enthusiasts,” he snorted, examining the wound. “You ready?”

She slapped his hands away when he reached for the knife. “Gimme a second.” She took a breath. “Okay. Count of three.”

“One. Two. Three,” he counted off slowly, then plucked the blade from beneath her collarbone.

“Barbra Streisand!” Lucy hissed, her lips drawing back over her teeth. Clint recoiled as the blood and muscle revealed by the wound glowed like magma before closing up and smoothing over. She took a deep breath and something that had been subtly off about her ribcage righted itself. He closed his eyes, feeling vaguely nauseous. He wondered briefly if that’s what his arm had looked like when she’d healed him.

“You gonna make it?” he asked.

She gave him a dirty look and fished a her cigarettes out of her jacket pocket. She tapped one out and lit it.

“Of course I’m gonna fucking make it. I’m invincible,” she replied sourly. “I’m the great and powerful wizard of Oz. Pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain”

“You just got a knife in the lung, and now you’re smoking,” Clint said flatly.

“I’ve got someone else’s rotten brains on my face, a double-digit bank balance, an unwilling accomplice, and a freshly-repaired mortal wound. I don’t see today getting much more smoke ‘em if you got ‘em than this, so yeah, I’m lighting up.” She pushed herself up on her elbows. “I should get you back to SHIELD before Coulson starts sending me aggressively disappointed texts and Thor starts pestering my neighbors for a forwarding address.”

“No rush, I guess. At least not until you can stay upright,” he sighed.

“Aren’t you being magnanimous,” she snorted. “Why the change of heart?”

“Well, you did just sustain a serious injury pursuing the rather noble goal of re-interring the evil undead, so I think some slack is warranted. Then there’s the fact that I don’t want to wind up teleported halfway through a wall or something else really detrimental to my health. Also, I believe you said something about an endless supply of arrows.”

She laughed, then winced. “Ow. Fuck, those ribs are going to be sore for a few days. You didn’t get tagged, dig you?”

“No.” He flexed his arm and rotated his shoulder. “That’s from before, in Burgas.”

“They’ll get you sorted out once you’re home, then,” she grunted. “The quiver’s going to have to wait until at least tomorrow, though.” She flipped a business card at him. “Text me when you get a spare ten minutes after one o’clock, I’ll take care of it then.”

“I help you put down an actual zombie menace, and I get an IOU?” He crossed his arms. “Rip off.”

“Jones, Jones, Jones, and Jones, LLC, thanks you for your cooperation,” she deadpanned.

He groaned. “That only gets brought out when somebody’s getting jacked.”

“Yeah, well, lucky for you I’m nicer about these things than you guys are. But I should warn you, if you text me and it’s a trap, I’m going to be deeply, fantastically annoyed about it.”

He managed a lopsided grin and sat down on a fallen tree. “I’m shaking in my boots.”

“You should be. Me being annoyed translates into zero arrows for you. You’ll go from having all the arrows you could possibly want to having none of the arrows, ever.” She sat up and waved her hands around. “Curse of the ages!”

“I imagine a curse of the ages probably wouldn’t involve arrows,” Clint said. “And I’m keeping the shotgun.”

“Whatever.” She shook her head. “And it just goes to show what you know. We’ve been using arrows to ruin each other’s days from a distance for a lot longer than we’ve been using guns. The ages look at bullet-related curses and turn up their noses at that sort of fancypants, newfangled nonsense. It’s not appropriate for use in ages-cursing.”

“If I didn’t know you, I’d say this was blood-loss talking.”

“Some of it might be,” she admitted. “The lady got me pretty good. I think you putting down her shock troops freed up the power she was using to keep them going. But it’s also been a bad fucking week, and I’ve been up for three days straight, so probably most of it is just me. I mean, seriously, how is it that when some assholes decide they’re going to go loot a fucking tomb, they inevitably manage to pick the ones where they run a good risk of unleashing some ancient, sleeping monster?” She looked around and shook her head. “I just want to go home, dig a bunch of empties out of the recycling bin, crawl into the bathtub, and pretend this was all a gin-fueled nightmare when I wake up.”

He stared at her for a second and started to say something. It took three tries before he gave up and muttered, “I might have to remember that one.”

“I know, right? I’m pretty proud of it. Fuck establishing an alibi for the police. The hardest thing is coming up with an alibi for yourself. Like, did you just get your asses handed to you by a bunch of guys whose stupid theme would lead someone to believe they shouldn’t even be able to move with weather as cold as that? Fuck no, you couldn’t have. You’ve been busy drinking yourself stupid the past three days. You must have _dreamed_ it. Are these really a partially-resurrected sorceress’s brains all over my face? Nope! I probably passed out on an empanada at some point and got surly with anybody who tried to hand me a wetwipe.”

“Wow.” He made a face. “I say this as someone who got his start in a low-rent circus: if you ever get an empanada that looks like what you’ve got smeared on your face, don’t eat it. Under any circumstances. It’s how you wind up at an emergency clinic in Tucson with an Indian doctor repeatedly asking you if you’re positive you haven’t spent the last year in a Hyderabad slum, because that’s the last time he saw parasites this bad. That stuff looks _foul_.”

“Great. I think.” She got to her feet. “Okay. So...you’re going back to half a mile over New York. I’m going to go autoclave myself. Have fun with the shotgun. Tell Coulson I said hi.”

“Am I really going to get my fee out of this?” he asked.

“Look, it’s really not that big a thing. I’ve done it before. Hell, I’ve done this....” She stopped and pursed her lips.

“What?” Clint demanded, getting to his feet and looking around.

“Nothing, I just don’t think I ever turned something off. I should probably take care of that. Soonish,” she said. “Like, _really_ soon. But anyway, yes, you’re really going to get your magic arrow-sack out of this. I’d offer to pinky-swear about it, but, you know, mummy gore.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” he agreed. “Should I tell your brother you say hi, too?”

“Oh, my fucking god,” she growled. “Seriously? You people need to stop encouraging this. It’s a shitty thing to do to somebody you’re supposed to be teammates with. I mean, yes, _realpolitik_ , I get it. But he’s been playing straight with you guys, and you’re fucking him over on this.”

“Come on, Jones. He’s got a goddamn psychic link with you,” Clint retorted. “Nobody could talk him out of it even if they were inclined to try.”

“He’s got a what, now?” she snapped, her eyes wide.

“Magic link? He can tell when you’re around?” Clint frowned. “Is this jogging your memory at all?”

“Alien god-viking motherfucker,” Lucy hissed to herself. He tensed slightly.

“You can tell when _he’s_ around, can’t you?” he asked.

She glared at him and recovered her composure. “Dude. Of course I can. I can sense his presence _anywhere on the fucking globe_. I pulled that bastard back to life. Carried his fucking soul around like a sack of flour and then put it back in his fucking body. It’s not unusual. Hell, why shouldn’t he be able to tell when I’m around? Between my magic and his magic and generalized ambient magic, he’s probably lucky that stupid hammer still spits lightning and not fire and banana peels. Generalized transference happens sometimes.”

“That’s your explanation? That’s what you’re going with? You’ve got magical residue stuck to each other?”

“No, because that makes it sound ten different kinds of brain-empanada-level gross. And also? It’s _magic_ ,” she said smugly. “Good luck contradicting me.”

Clint cocked his head. “Yeah, that works about as well as when I ask Tony if he’s sure about his calculations, and he asks everybody with advanced engineering degrees to raise their hands.”

“So, really well?” Lucy hazarded.

“Tony forgets to carry the one a lot,” he clarified.

“This is my shocked face.” Her expression remained utterly unsurprised. “Still, magic.”

“Not to mention, it only manifested after that weird cuddlefest-cum-movie marathon in Tony’s penthouse,” he persisted.

“I’m reasonably sure that whole thing was just a pot-and-booze-soaked fever-dream,” she said. “Didn’t actually happen.”

“Now you’re just being childish,” he sighed.

“No, childish would be if I just teleported you back to the helicarrier because I didn’t want to have this conversation anymore,” Lucy huffed, scowling. Her expression brightened suddenly. “Oh, wait, that’s right. I don’t care what you think. See you tomorrow.”

Clint landed in the middle of an occupied meeting room with a startled gasp. He had a dozen weapons pointed at him before the occupants registered his identity.

“Hi, guys,” he grunted, steadying himself. “How’d it go in Burgas? Anything fun happen while I was gone?”

*****

Lucy sat down heavily, her hand straying to the spot the sorceress’s knife had punched through flesh and broken bone. As far from ideal as the execution had been, the outcome had been pretty much all she could hope for. Sorceress back in the underworld, nobody else dead, everything dumped back in more or less the same location it had come from. Barton essentially placated and back with the Avengers. SHIELD would probably be in a snit but not quietly posting a bounty. She went to push her hair out of her face again and groaned at the brains still on her hands. Lucy closed her eyes and focused. Fire raced along her skin, and the blood and tissue burned to ash and flaked off. She rubbed her hands together and brushed off her face, shuddering. The undead could officially fuck off.

She cracked her knuckles and leaned back, stretching cramped muscles and cricked joints. Barton’s news about Thor was....She didn’t know quite how to classify it. Disturbing. Annoying. Not entirely unexpected. A problem. She lit another cigarette. He had magic of his own, even if he didn’t use it. The hammer practically _was_ magic, augmenting anything its wielder brought to the table to a considerable degree. She wasn’t sure precisely how Asgardian magic behaved; based on what she’d seen from the healers and Amora, there did appear to be room for desire and raw power to combine into a functional spell, assuming each was present in sufficient quantities. Gods knew she hadn’t set about deliberately cultivating a sense of his whereabouts, but she could still tell where _he_ was. If she concentrated to any degree, she could tell what he was doing and how he was feeling. The way it was simultaneously comforting and disorienting was enough to make her want to break something big and expensive and government-owned. That he’d managed to achieve a limited sense of her presence was, she supposed, unsurprising. Between his inherent abilities and the straightforwardness of his affection, he had the makings of an accidental accomplishment.

Lucy sighed. The more he was around, the more he felt like he was missing when he wasn’t. It was unsettling, the way things felt like they subtly clicked into place when he was present, not least because of the way he was so definitely and absurdly out of place on earth. She rubbed at the newly-repaired patch of muscle under her clavicle and grunted as it twinged. She liked him. He was likeable. He was a pain in the ass, yes, but if anyone else had decided to be half as big a pain in the ass as he was being, she’d have beaten them into the dirt months ago. So there was that. 

_If it was just him, if he was human, maybe things could be different_ , she thought. Maybe they could have figured out a way to coexist. But he came with strings attached, and eventually he was going to have to go home, and if he got much more annoying than he already was she really was going to have to set him on fire and dump him somewhere off the coast of Greenland, and it was utterly pointless to get mopey about what might have been if only the situation was somehow completely different. That he reminded her of what it had been like to have a family didn’t change anything.

She took a drag off her cigarette and looked around. There was nothing salvageable of the looted artifacts. Everything that hadn’t been sticking out of her chest at the time had gotten hit with everything she had left. The black knife lay where Barton had dropped it, still smoking. She looked more closely, her eyes narrowing.

“What the fuck?” she muttered. It hadn’t been smoking to begin with, had it? It hadn’t. She was sure of it. She hadn’t started healing herself until after it was out of the wound. She hadn’t particularly wanted melted obsidian sloshing around in her chest cavity.

The smoke grew darker and thicker. After a moment, realization dawned, and Lucy sighed. She patted down her pockets until she found the last two hand-rolled cigars, lit them, and tossed them at the blade. The smoke seemed to purr a little.

“To what do I owe the honor of your presence?” she asked.

“The sarcasm is uncalled for, child.”

“I’m not being sarcastic. My voice is just stuck that way right now.”

“Indeed.” The god did not sound convinced. “We need to speak at some length, you and I. Come with me.”

“Where are we going?” she sighed, getting to her feet. One did not even bother trying to argue with Tezcatlipōca.

“Paris. I hear it’s lovely this time of year.”

“Wait.” She stared at the smoke. “ _Really?_ ”

“Of course not. Where do you think we’re going?”

“An abandoned sinkhole in the middle of fucking nowhere,” she grumbled. “Paris _is_ lovely this time of year. You ever think about mixing things up a little?”

“You ever think of burning some copal in my honor?”

“Uh, I could? If you want me to?” she offered.

“What do you think?”

“I think that’s a trick question, and that I’m going to be setting a fucking forest’s worth of copal on fire as soon as we’re done here.”

“An excellent decision. Come. Let us depart.”

Lucy started to protest, then gave up as the ground vanished beneath her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tezcatlipōca (Smoking Mirror) is borrowed from Aztec mythology.


	27. Chapter 27

Lucy landed at the mouth of a cave with an undignified yelp. She got up and dusted herself off, taking some solace in it being a cave rather than a cenote. A low growl from a big cat rumbled from farther inside the cavern.

“Come, child.”

“Are you sure we can’t do this someplace pleasant?”

“I am not a god of pleasant things,” he said, his voice making the walls vibrate.

“I don’t know about that,” she countered. “Sorcery’s pretty rockin’.”

“Not when I do it.”

“Okay, point.” She sighed and made her way into the cave. “Mind if I light the way?”

He grunted but didn’t reply. She took it as permission and sparked a small flame into being. It hovered above them, illuminating the large cave, a jaguar-shaped patch of living shadow, and the steep descent at the rear of the cave.

“Have I been here before?” she asked, a memory dancing just out of reach.

“Several times. I believe you got a head start on the psychotropics, though.”

“Oh. One of _those_ places,” she said flatly. Places that were always a physical location but also sometimes the manifestation of something else. She was not in the mood to be in one of those places, but there wasn’t much else for it. “Do I get to find out where we’re going and why we’re going there any time soon?”

“If you can’t figure out the first, I’ll be very disappointed. As to the second, patience.”

“I’ve got a few ideas about the first, yes, but I was hoping that I was wrong.” Not that she was terribly worried about Malīnalxōchitl while she was in the company of Tezcatlipōca, but this was beginning to feel like a habit. “I don’t suppose I can get the condensed version about the second?”

The steep slope at the back of the cave led to a pool of water whose dimensions she couldn’t guess at. The jaguar leaped down easily and sat back on his haunches, waiting for her. She walked down, reorienting gravity around her slightly so that she could do so comfortably instead of sliding or falling. Once she’d joined him, she could see the lake flickering into and back out of existence. A canoe bobbed at the water’s edge. The jaguar jumped into it and slipped into the shape of an extraordinarily handsome man. He lounged back in the prow and dangled the leg with the missing foot over the side.

“Is that such a great idea?” she asked. “I mean, that’s how you lost that bit in the first place, isn’t it?”

Black eyes narrowed in annoyance. “Just get in.”

She clambered into the canoe, rocking it enough to irritate him.

“Will you please be careful?” he snapped.

“I just got these boots,” she grumbled, “and I’d prefer not to ruin them already.”

“If you’d worn something sensible, like sandals, you wouldn’t have these problems,” he sniffed.

She kicked off from the shore and settled into the stern. The little boat propelled itself slowly but deliberately toward a huge stone jaguar’s maw carved around another opening on the other side of the lake. It was some time before he spoke again.

“I don’t suppose it’s escaped you that I lost my foot _creating the earth_?” he asked.

“Cipactli ate it and then you, um, used her to make the world, yeah?” she said. It wasn’t quite right, and she knew it, but she couldn’t remember what she was missing.

He snorted. “I used it as bait to trap the beast in order to make the world, child. It was a willing sacrifice in exchange for the power to create without all being devoured by the ever-hungering.”

“Good job.” She raised her hand for a high five.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked. His voice had a sharp edge to it.

“Being left hanging,” she said. “Come on. You hooked the earth crocodile with your own foot. If that doesn’t earn you props, I don’t know what does.”

“Put your hand down, you ridiculous creature.”

She grudgingly dropped her arm. “Is that why I’m here? You want your foot back?”

“Don’t be foolish. Once sacrificed to such a goal, a thing cannot be reclaimed.” He shifted position, and his armbands rattled. “You know that I was the sun? The other gods made blood sacrifices to me so that I could keep humanity alive.”

“You sure you don’t want that high five?”

“Stop provoking me.” He glowered at her. “My brother grew jealous and sought to overthrow me,” he continued. “Eventually, he succeeded. He hurled me from the sky, and an endless night fell, and men were destroyed. My brother does not take the full measure of things when he makes his plans, you see. He usurped me.”

“That bastard,” Lucy mollified him.

“Don’t think to patronize me, child,” he warned. “We made humanity anew. My brother took my place as the sun. For a time, things were at peace in spite of him.”

The canoe glided through the jaguar’s mouth, and Lucy blinked, trying to clear her eyes. The cave beyond was more of a tunnel, and the glistening rocks and smooth curves reminded her of nothing so much as a throat. Hieroglyphs and murals detailing the story decorated the walls. They moved as Tezcatlipōca spoke. Giants went through the motions of their lives and worshipped their gods under the light of a half-sun in the shape of a prowling jaguar. When it was struck from the sky, it fell upon them and slaughtered every last one. The darkness eventually gave way as the god who had felled the previous sun ascended, stretching white-feathered wings and shining on a new race of men and women.

“Quetzalcohuātl was lenient beyond all measure. Mankind learned riot and disobedience under his reign. They abandoned the temples and forgot what was due to us in exchange for our labors and our gifts.” His eyes narrowed to slits. The people on the wall revelled while the altars lay empty and dry and the effigies gathered dust and grime. The painted cat prowled at the edges of their fires, its expression mirroring the god’s. “They were rebuked.”

“I see,” she said. The jaguar on the wall pounced on their fire, his paw scattering ash and cinder and leaving the scene dark. When the quetzal sun rose, a fluttering wheel of feathers and scales, he saw monkeys where humanity had been.

“I made their forms match what their hearts had become,” he growled. “My brother could not see the justice of it. He’d have left us to founder and wither, dooming his precious ingrates in the process. Of course, in the tantrum he threw afterwards, he destroyed them all anyway.” A thin, cold smile twisted his lips. “As I said, my brother does not take the full measure of things.”

The mural showed a distraught sun beating wings whose span covered half the sky against his breast in anger and despair. The wind flattened forests, beat the sea up over its shores, and blasted the monkeys from the human dwellings they’d taken shelter in. He didn’t subside until the world had almost been unmade. Quetzalcohuātl hung his head, folded his feathers flat against his scales, and descended from the sky.

“We chose another among our number to serve the new humans as their sun, but he proved capricious and easily distracted.” His breastplate gleamed in the light of Lucy’s flame, and his eyes glittered as the painted jaguar moved on from the hurricane to the new sun, padding around a beautiful woman as she wove feathers and jade into a cloak. The sun took the cloak, and the cat stole away with the woman, leaving the sun’s house empty. “A rain god who won’t rain. Can you imagine? Without his wife, he couldn’t even tolerate the prayers and sacrifices the people made to win his favor. The very idea of mortals being happy while his house lay barren was infuriating to him.”

Fire poured down from the sun, running over the land like the water he refused them. The earth burned until nothing remained. Once more, the gods came together to re-make humans, kneading the ash and soot together into the proper shape and breathing life into them. The previous sun was joined by a new woman, who rose to light the new world.

“Chālchiuhtlicuē had the unusual duty of replacing Tlaloc in the sky and Tlaloc’s wife in their home. She had a lovely face, but her heart was hollow and false. In spite of that, she managed to dote on men even more thoroughly than my idiot brother did.” The painted jaguar crept out onto a branch hanging over the new sun, where she sat looking into a small spring. In the spring’s reflection, Lucy could see not the goddess’s face but her temples full to bursting and her altars piled high with offerings.

“Looks like it worked out all right for her, though,” she observed. 

Tezcatlipōca shrugged, his expression hardening slightly. The jaguar’s ears flattened back against its skull as the sun smiled. Tail thrashing and claws shredding the tree’s bark, he lowered his head until he was only a few inches from the goddess’s ear. His jaws moved, and a thin scroll of hieroglyphs unfurled, snapping from his teeth to her ear. The sun’s face clouded over, and she began to weep. Her red tears fell against the surface of the pool, and torrential rains fell on her people.

“Perhaps for a time, it went well for her. But the people neglected their duties to the rest of us. One cannot be counted as suitably pious if one worships only one deity, can one?” he asked tartly.

“Does that mean I have to burn copal for everybody?”

He grimaced at her. “They get their share from their own children.”

“Just checking,” she sighed. The water level in the tunnel rose as they moved along and the sun continued to cry. The pool slowly grew cloudier and darker from her tears until it was the color of blood.

“What good is a sun who drowns her people?” he asked.

“Uh, not much?” she offered when it became clear that it wasn’t a rhetorical question. He huffed.

“You’re not even paying attention,” he muttered.

“No need to be a dick about this, dude.” The jaguar in the mural was lounging on the tree over the gore-bathed pond, licking his chops. “You could have just handed me a book like last time.”

“Last time? What do I have to do with some petty death-lords being duped out of their power?” he spat. “You think I’m going to have some soulless reproduction of sacred texts you should have learned on your mother’s knee stuffed into your pocket before I turn you loose?”

“You could? I mean, if the moral here is ‘Don’t piss off the sun,’ message fucking received.”

“The message is slightly more complicated than that,” Tezcatlipōca hissed. The cave walls glowed red as Chālchiuhtlicuē’s pool overflowed its bounds, and the stone pulsed with the rhythm of a heartbeat. The water eventually swallowed her, or she dissolved into it, Lucy was unsure which. Darkness fell.

“Chālchiuhtlicuē failed completely in her task. A few of her favorites were transformed into fish so that they avoided death by drowning, but the rest perished. My brother could not accept it any more than he’d accepted my judgment against his beast-men.”

White wings cut through the darkness, and the red pulse returned as Quetzalcohuātl raised an obsidian blade to his earlobes, then his tongue, then his foreskin. The blood flowed over the pile of bones at his feet. They were clothed in flesh again as the god’s blood rained over them, and they stirred back to life as a green hummingbird--the new sun--darted into the sky.

“Huītzilopōchtli’s the sun now,” Lucy observed. “We’re done, then? Cool. This was all fascinating, but...” She caught his look. “Okay, not done. Also cool.”

“You were much more sympathetic when you first arrived on this plane,” the god growled.

“Not possible. I’m so sympathetic to whatever it is you’re trying to communicate that it hurts. I feel your pain. Douchebag brothers are the worst.”

“Indeed.” The god sighed, annoyed, and trailed his fingertips through the water. The canoe gained speed and tipped downward. The hummingbird-sun kept pace with them, always hovering slightly in front of the prow. 

Lucy let her small flame go out, gripped the edges of the boat, and braced herself. “Okay, so...does this have to do with that weird-ass kind-of prophecy that had everybody thinking Cortés might be Quetzalcohuātl until he gave everybody smallpox and Christianity? Something about the age of the sixth sun being imminent?”

“Humans,” Tezcatlipōca growled. “Nobody thought that obnoxious Spanish illiterate was my brother, and the sixth sun is _always_ imminent.”

“I’m not hearing a no.”

“Very well. Yes, this has to do with the current phase of my brother’s never-ending struggle against my better-earned claim over the world.”

“He’s not happy that Hummingbird’s the sun?” Lucy asked. “Why? Didn’t he swipe the fire he used to be the sun himself from Huītzilopōchtli in the first place? I’d think he’d be okay with it, unless you’re planning to go all chicken-killer on everybody again.”

The god’s lip curled. “My brother has never been content to rely on the work of others, even if he’s had to steal it in order to make anything of himself.”

The painted god on the wall crept toward a fire as Huītzilopōchtli slept. A duplicate below that scene quietly gathered the bones of the drowned while a death-god sang drunkenly at the moon. A third copy below the Quetzalcohuātl stealthily stowing bones in his pack eyed the panther-sun with envy and hefted a great war-club in his hands.

“Our temples lie sunken and empty. People have forgotten us. It grows more and more difficult for Huītzilopōchtli to win his battle against his sister and their brothers.” The hummingbird on the wall raised a torch against a woman’s pale, bloodless head, and an army’s worth of shining darts descending upon him.

“He seemed to be doing well enough with that last time I saw him,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

“Different sister,” Tezcatlipōca replied. The woman’s head scowled at them, then went still and faded into the moon.

“Ah. So, um, your brother wants to...take over the world?” Lucy guessed.

“My brother misses the adoration the people used to heap upon him. He saw the love they had for Chālchiuhtlicuē, and his jealousy was inflamed even then. If she hadn’t reacted so badly to the truth when I revealed it, he’d have overthrown her in time. Perhaps if she had married him instead of Tlaloc, he might have been content to bask in their shared glory.” He shook his head. “I doubt it, though. I know my brother. His pride is overweening.”

“So, yes.”

The water reached a level, the stream emptying into a huge swamp. They slid from under the roof of the cave, losing Huītzilopōchtli and the myriad Quetzalcohuātls and whatever else wanted to contradict or explain Tezcatlipōca’s story. Lucy glanced around. The trees were hung with shields and atlatls, spindles and pestles, spears and cloaks. A skull still wrapped in a paper headband grinned at them from the fork of one tree, and a scepter glittered in the mud below it.

“I’ve never been to this part of the underworld before,” she remarked, looking up at the stars. “This is opposite the normal entrance, isn’t it?”

“This is the beginning of the path of gods. You came here before, when you first arrived.” He pointed vaguely in the direction of one copse, and Lucy tilted her head. A golden helmet with two long, recurved horns gleamed where it hung from a thick branch. Below it, laid over a thick shrub, were bits and pieces of matching armor. A belt of knives was looped over a lower branch. They were laughably out of keeping with the rest of the remnants of divine lives. “You left them there, when you and I struck our bargain.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Lucy ran her hands through her hair. She was torn between leaving them here, safe, hidden away, buried like the damning evidence they were, and thinking that it would mean a great deal to Thor to get them back. She wouldn’t even have to give them to him. She could dump them in a dusty SHIELD evidence/artifact warehouse somewhere and let him find them on his own. He was immortal. They’d turn up eventually, when somebody got bored and did inventory. She chewed her lip and made a decision based on impulse and, she thought, cumulative brain damage from chronic abuse of controlled substances. “Can I have them back?”

“They’re yours,” Tezcatlipōca said. “Go get them if you want them.”

She glanced at her boots and sighed heavily. She got up, took a tentative step out of the canoe, and silently congratulated herself when the surface of the water held her. A very minor miracle, yes, but the underworld’s swamps were practically malevolent when it came to their ability to foul and mire even the most careful magicians. The first time she’d blundered into the one on the other side of the realm, she’d spent almost a week in the ocean before she’d felt clean again. She wobbled carefully to the knot of trees, shucked her jacket, and started rolling the armor up in it. Lucy tied the sleeves around the bundle and knotted them, securing it. She slung the belt over her shoulder, tucked the helm under one arm and the jacket under the other, and made her way back to the canoe. The metal felt strangely warm and light in her hands.

“Do you think you could possibly stop the canoe for one fucking second?” she demanded.

He seemed to think about it for a shade too long before granting the request. Lucy deposited the salvage in the center of the canoe and climbed back in. She felt stupid and ridiculous the moment she looked at the detritus of her old life piled haphazardly in front of her. What the hell was she thinking? _I should toss them overboard and let them sink, give them a proper burial._ She couldn’t bring herself to touch them again.

“We struck a bargain, did we?” she grumbled, settling back into place. 

“Mmm. I think you had some idea of wriggling out of it, at the time.”

“I may yet,” she warned him. His lips parted in a cold smile, sliding back to reveal jaguar fangs.

“I think not.” The boat began moving again. The tools and weapons and ornaments gave way to enormous spiderwebs and altars and monuments. Lucy toyed with her ring. “You’ve surely surmised for yourself that my brother is a bit of an idiot.”

“I think you just straight up explained that one,” she said quickly. “No surmising reuired.”

His dark eyes flashed at her tone. “My brother chose to invest a mortal with his power, to act directly and bring about the change he desired.”

She wrinkled her nose. “An avatar?”

Tezcatlipōca laughed heartily, his voice roaring through the quiet swamp. “Would that he had. This would have been a simple thing if that’s what he’d done. No. He chose a...champion, you’d call it.”

“That sounds...less than fun.” Lucy flicked a cigarette out of the pack and lit it, her mind working. She didn’t remember anything before she was three or four. She’d couldn’t even begin to guess at what sort of deal she’d struck with the night-god, or why he was telling her this. There was a level on which she believed him to be telling the truth, just like, intellectually, she _knew_ the objects she’d retrieved from the wayside had once belonged to her. Every other level, however, was still empty, and her memory was refusing to fill it in.

His nostrils flared at the smoke. “Feh. Pale, wretched things. Give me a cigar.”

“I gave you the last two I had while we were topside,” she told him. He sulked.

“Then give me one of those _poor excuses_ for a cigar.” She did as he asked, shaking her head. “This is what I mean when I say mankind has become debased and corrupt. It is an evil thing when the heart is torn from something’s breast without it benefiting anyone, no?”

“Your brother picked a champion?” she prompted him.

An illusion shimmered across the surface of the water, showing her a man perhaps a few years older than her with dark hair, darkly bronzed skin, and a friendly smile. He was wearing chinos and a white polo shirt. She looked at the god in silent question.

“Joe Navarez, of Fort Worth, Texas,” he intoned.

Lucy stared at the image. She could feel the other shoe getting ready to drop. “Okay.”

“He is employed to be what you people call a ‘cost engineer’ for a builders’ guild. An honorable-seeming profession, though he mostly works on inferior projects relating to bloodless commerce.”

“Your brother’s champion is just _some fucking dude_?” she sputtered. “Some fucking dude named _Joe_ who lives in fucking _Texas_ and works as a fucking architect’s fucking accountant? What the fuck do you want me to do, go cut the bottoms out of all his pocket protectors? Switch his calculator to base-16? Reset all his GPS equipment?”

“While I certainly wouldn’t dissuade you from doing so, it would be of little use. This is the man my brother selected as his champion, not the one in which my brother invested his power.”

“I...what?”

“I did mention my brother’s impatience and general incompetence, did I not?” The smoke from his cigarette wreathed his form, clinging close as if it were caught in some unfelt slipstream. The obsidian disc in the center of his breastplate flashed and crackled. “My brother, the great Quetzalcohuātl, the god who would reign over his beloved mortals as the sun once more, in his infinite wisdom and care and attention to detail, selected this man as his champion and then invested what was to have been that man’s power into this.”

His lip curled back contemptuously as the image in the water blurred and shifted into the shape of her nemesis.

“Are you fucking kidding me.” She couldn’t even make it sound like a question. “Are you seriously telling me that the fucking sea scorpion I’ve been fighting because he wants to turn the world back into a Permian nightmare is doing the work of another god.” She ground the heel of her palm into her forehead. “Can we turn this thing around? I think I need to go apologize to Malīnalxōchitl.”

“Unnecessary,” he stated.

“Seriously? I figured it for a close thing when I thought he was just a god. There’s no way I’m going to be able to beat what’s effectively two gods standing on each other’s shoulders. No fucking way.”

“Of course you can. Stop being such a child. That was the whole point of our arrangement.” The god exhaled, long and deep, and Lucy realized the smoke smelled of incense instead of tobacco. “When my brother realized what he’d done, he was desperate, but he was also proud. He did not wish to admit it. He tried taunting me, telling me that his triumph was assured, that the world would be his to cosset again.” He fixed her with a sharp glare. “My brother is terrible at dissembling.”

She glared back. “Skip to the part where I can somehow beat a double-superpowered monstrosity.”

“No.” Tezcatlipōca stretched. “As I was saying, my brother was unable to deceive me for more than the space of a day. I quickly found out what he’d done. Can you imagine my wrath? He’d overthrow humanity completely and replace them with a race of voiceless beasts. Do you know how many temples those spineless insects built, when they ruled? What songs they sang? What sacrifices they made?”

“None?” she guessed.

“None!” he snarled. “And even if they did, we’d be the laughingstocks of the cosmos, being worshipped by something like that. Naturally, my brother, having caused the disaster, wanted none of setting it right. It took me a full month to make him admit what he’d done. It took me another month to make him agree to my plan.”

“Which was?” she prompted when he lapsed into silence.

“You,” he grunted.

“Me.”

“You.”

“That’s a shitty plan,” she told him, crossing her arms.

He pretended not to have heard her. “Where you came from, I cared not. Only that you were present, ready to hand. A god without a pantheon, without a vested interest in one party or the other. A god who could act as a surrogate without objection or partiality. A god who could act as a mercenary. A god to whom my power could be added, a god who could be set in the way of my brother’s misbegotten stratagem.”

“Uh- _huh_.”

“I do begin to see the disadvantages of my plan, however,” he said warningly.

“What did I get out of this? I know my magic’s my own. You’re not what’s fueling me.”

“You, my little exile, got to live.” He grinned at her, his expression feral and cunning. She regretted giving him the cigarette. “To be of any use to us, you needed to be clothed in flesh again. I think you’d rather had enough of roaming the land of the dead, walking a star-road that could not take you home. In return for doing this for me, I saw to it that you were reborn. I extended my favor to one of the unfaithful on your behalf.”

“That doesn’t seem like much if I’m just going to get my ass torn apart by a giant fucking scorpion,” Lucy grumbled

“You also wanted to reign.” He snorted. “At the time, anyway. When the opportunity came to take your gift, you declined it. Though, if you behave yourself properly, it would not be too late to go and reclaim it.”

Her jaw dropped. “That was _you_?”

“Trying to guide you to a throne? Who else would it be? I’m the kingmaker, child. No one else could have fashioned you into the queen I needed.” She shivered at his words.

“So instead of your brother accidentally killing us all and turning the place over to water-borne cockroaches, you want to deliberately kill us all and...I’m marginally unclear on what comes after that.”

“Nothing. That was part of the... _arrangement_ between my brother and I. A truce, until after this battle has been won. I would not seek supremacy through you if he did not seek supremacy through the god of the eurypterids. Once you’ve defeated the creature, we return to our fight. For now, we are united by the common goal of retaining humanity.”

“You just said you meant for me to take over the world,” she pointed out.

He shrugged. “That does not mean I would have destroyed it, or even that I’d have taken absolute control over it. Merely that you would have been instrumental in returning the earth to balance and proper respect for its deities.”

“The distinction between ‘taking it over’ and ‘respect for you guys’ is pretty meaningless.”

“It is not. None have ever ruled, but with my blessing. All who wear a crown, all who govern their fellows, must pay service to me or fall in their turn. You would simply have been no different than any other potentate.” He yawned, seeming bored. “In any event, my brother objected to the idea of a child-god set loose on the face of the earth with my power behind them. You have not yet received the portion of my power our bargain allows me to throw behind you.”

“That seems...unexpectedly wise, given the situation.”

“Truly? It was my opinion that you being unfamiliar with the amount of power I can give you would lead you into disadvantage during the actual battle.”

“Probably not as much of a disadvantage as me frying myself the first time I tried to do anything,” she countered. “It’s hard to do shit when you’re a greasy ash-smear on the ground.”

“And yet I’m convinced you could still have managed it,” the god sighed.

“So why now?”

“Why now? Why now? Because now is the time for you to quit, as one might say, _fucking around_ and get to work.” He bared his fangs again. “What you do afterwards is your own affair, but you are currently under contract. Focus on the task at hand to the best of your self-stunted ability. You will bring this mistake to an end, and you will do it quickly.”

She eyed him carefully. “Is this because now I could theoretically leave the planet if I wanted?”

“Of course not.” He slapped the water with his palm irritably.

Lucy looked down at the helm at her feet. It was still polished to a bright sheen. A great amount of craftsmanship had clearly gone into its construction. It still seemed a pathetic, abandoned thing. Her stomach twisted uncomfortably.

“Because if it is, I can’t. Leave, I mean. I’d sooner cut off my hand.” She finished her cigarette and carefully burned the filter to ash before dusting her hands off into the water. “Wherever the fuck I was before, this is my home now. There is no other world.”

“Your sincerity and sentiment are duly noted,” he growled, “but you’ll forgive me, I hope, if I don’t take your word for it.”

“I could say the same about your promise of aid.” She picked at her sleeve. “I could say the same about this whole damn thing. What the fuck was I thinking, trading a suicide mission for a shot at living again? This place ain’t _that_ bad.”

“Great things are not bought cheaply,” he pointed out. “Whatever your reasoning, you agreed to the trade.”

“Was I high?” Lucy grunted. She stared at the helm again. It was an odd sensation, like suddenly being struck with vertigo. “I don’t want to die. Not that I can’t come back from.”

“Then win.”

“Well, then.” She kicked at the helm sullenly. “Problem solved.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Malīnalxōchitl, Tezcatlipōca, Quetzalcohuātl, Chālchiuhtlicuē, Huītzilopōchtli, and Tlaloc are divinities from the Aztec pantheon. 
> 
> The story of the five suns is one variant of the Aztec creation myth; the action depicted by the paintings is much more accurate, according to extant texts, than Tezcatlipōca's narration. Some liberties have been taken with the details.


	28. Chapter 28

_They were falling. They were falling, and there wasn’t a way to stop. She’d tried to push through the fog, tried to reach the others, and then the ground hadn’t been there anymore. Her arm hurt, and her skin was blistered, and she felt like she’d been caught in a blast furnace, but even that shouldn’t have been able to actually hurt her. Where the hell were they? A gust of wind hit her, and she thought she might be moving up instead of down, the wind’s force strong enough to overcome gravity for a moment. She was twisting, then, trying to get back down. She could hear voices, and then she was choking on the overwhelming smell of...what? She knew that smell. She couldn’t see, and what she could hear over the roar of the wind and the roar of flames and the roar of voices rising in pain and anger was worse than useless. But that smell was important somehow._

_Heated air, and smoke, and...something animal. Large and animal. Not a mammal. Not a bird. Reptile. Lizard. She tried dashing the tears out of her eyes, hoping to clear them and accomplishing nothing. The wind was too strong, too hot, too full of ash. Her magic wasn’t working. She hit the ground with a sharp shock, hard enough to crack ribs and rattle teeth and drive the breath from her body. She got her intact arm under her and pushed up, trying to scramble to her feet. The smoke cleared just long enough for her to get a look around her. A half-dozen armored warriors lay scattered on the ground, and above them all reared a dragon._

_The dragon was somehow not unexpected, and her mind protested even as her body moved toward it. She called...something. Unfamiliar magic flowed through her body, and she felt an answer from a distance. Something moving toward them. A hammer. Mjolnir._

_Lucy shook herself violently. This didn’t make sense. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t her. She tried to peel off the foreign power, the foreign_ \--memory, it had to be a memory, what the fuck else could it be-- _mind, and almost succeeded. It clung like a spiderweb, stretching and sticking even as she kicked harder against it. The view before her warped and cracked under her efforts, but the pain of her--no, not hers,_ someone else’s _\--injuries spiked as soon as the illusion started to dissolve. Her fingers closed around Mjolnir’s handle, and then she was lifting it, swinging it, striking out with a bolt of lightning. Its power conspired against her, winding her more tightly into the borrowed body. She growled, dug in heels that weren’t hers, and held back when the flesh started forward. It wasn’t real. This wasn’t happening. None of this made sense. She was hallucinating. Dreaming. Going mad. She tore free, and the body holding the hammer faltered and started to collapse. The dragon laughed, a booming howl that echoed and shook the ground beneath them._

_“So falls the mighty Thor,” it hissed, looming over the slumped figure. Lucy fought to get farther away from the pull. It was like trying to swim in molasses. The dragon inhaled, and Thor turned his head, his blue eyes startlingly bright in his ash-fouled face and pleading as they met hers._

_“Help me, brother.”_

_She opened her mouth to reply, but the dragon’s snarl cut her off._

_“Calling for your mother? A dishonorable end for the son of Odin. Fitting that vermin should die as such!” Flame poured from its mouth, blotting out everything but the fire._

Lucy clawed her way back to wakefulness, blinking cautiously. Her heart was hammering against her ribs so hard she thought they might break. “Fucking hell on wheels.”

It hadn’t been a dream. Or rather, not entirely. The wail-squawking of a fire alarm was drowning out all rational thought, her mouth tasted of soot, and she was an inch deep in water from the overhead sprinklers. She shifted and found that her leg was pinned under an overturned bar booth. She spit blood and kicked it off her. A thought killed the klaxon and the sprinklers, and she looked around, pressing her hand against the knot on the side of her skull. Her head throbbed, and a glance down informed her that her previously white blouse was covered in old blood, fresh blood, soot, grass stains, and coffee. Her palm was sticky and crimson when she pulled it away from her face. The rest of her body felt like a mass of bruises, abrasions, and strains. She’d been....She couldn’t remember. She was reasonably sure she was at least partially responsible for the state the bar was in, but that was experience rather than memory talking.

She picked her way over the sodden ruins, rifled through the remains of the counter, and took a long pull from the first intact bottle of rum she found. She swallowed and tried to focus. Trashed as the place was, she was more or less sure it was the Drunken Lord. She closed her eyes. Villain bar. A fight had started. No, _she_ ’d started a fight.

_I think._

Lucy looked around blearily. Yes, she’d started the fight. She’d shaken up Magic Hateball and then aimed his faceplate at Womanaconda and Firebrand, who’d gone off and lit up somebody else’s table and half the countertop. The whole place had gone up in a superpowered riot. The last thing she remembered clearly was a brightly-scaled tail the size of a manhole cover coming at her face. That had been....She looked at the floor and the walls. Probably less than an hour or two ago. The place was a bad bar in a bad section of a bad town. Everybody had cleared out, but the cops wouldn’t be showing up until morning. She felt like she’d been run over with a steamroller. Her phone chirped at her, and she glanced at it disinterestedly, then with greater attention.

“That can’t be right,” she muttered to herself, staring at the date display. Saturday? It should be Monday. She concentrated. Maybe, if she’d gotten _really_ shitfaced after the whole thing with the mummy, it could be Tuesday or Wednesday. Saturday was beyond the pale.

She staggered out of the hole in the wall that had been a side door and rebooted the device. It steadfastly refused to admit to any date except Saturday. Lucy rubbed her eyes. It was irrational to suspect the phone of taking pleasure in the date. That was a concussion talking. Or a hangover. What the hell had she been doing for the past six days? Seven days? What had possessed her to start that fight? She’d been angry about something, not at them. She’d wanted to hit something. A lot of things. She’d been furious. About...something.

She checked her phone. All her outgoing calls were to numbers she didn’t recognize. All her incoming calls were from people she didn’t want to talk to. Half of them were from Hawkeye, doubtless about the quiver upgrade she’d promised him. She looked down at herself. They probably wouldn’t appreciate her turning up looking like this. She wouldn’t appreciate the likely sarcasm about the lateness of payment. She rubbed her neck and glanced around the alley. It was filthy, but no filthier than she was at the moment. The one homeless man taking shelter behind a dumpster was determinedly pretending to still be asleep. 

Why the hell hadn’t she taken care of that stupid quiver on time? They’d put down the mummy. She’d sent him home. She’d meant to grab a six-pack and hit the beach and see him the next day. She’d run into Tezcatlipōca. _Oh. That’s right. I’m going to_ die _because some divine jackfuck can’t tell the difference between a quantity surveyor and an ocean-going arachnid the size of an F-250_.

Lucy ran her fingers through her sopping, tangled hair and groaned. At least her excuse for crawling into a bottle and getting into a fight was a decent one. She stretched tentatively. At least one fight. Probably more like five or six fights, based on how she was feeling. Fucking Quetzalcohuātl. Mother _fucking_ Quetzalcohuātl. What the fucking _fuck_ had the pair of them been thinking, playing games like that with the planet? What the fucking fuck had _she_ been thinking, agreeing to get sucked into it? She could have found another way to get resurrected. It wasn’t as if it was hard, just to come back to life. It wasn’t like she’d needed to get somebody to agree to birth a fucking god. She could have figured that part out later. They’d all gone temporarily insane. It was the only explanation. The pair of them had wrecked the world, and she’d climbed right onto that bandwagon without thinking it through, and now everything was fucked sideways. She gritted her teeth and saw fire flicker behind her vision. Her head was pounding like a kettle drum, and she had the sudden urge to tear out someone’s heart and eat it. She needed another bottle or two of rum and a new bar. 

“It doesn’t count as a black-out if you never come out of it, right?” she asked herself, tripping out of the alley and onto the street.

She ran her fingers over her the lump on her head and assessed the damage. Bad enough that she should fix it. She took care of her concussion while she was at it and fumbled for her cigarettes. The pack squished when she put her hand on it, leaking brown liquid all over her skirt. She grimaced. That hadn’t been coffee on her shirt after all. Or maybe it had been both. Coffee and tobacco juice. It should have been enough to put her off the things for good. She hurled them in the vague direction of an overturned trash can. 

Her wallet was gone. One of her earrings was missing. Her lighter and brass knuckles were in her pockets, but she’d have to work at it to lose either one for long. She’d broken the heel of one of her boots at some point and fixed it with duct tape. O rather, someone else had fixed it with duct tape. The job was careful and thorough in a way her kludges never were. Her phone was cracked. She’d taken a knife off somebody at some point, possibly the old fashioned, having-been-stabbed-with-it way. She had a few slashes in the back of her jacket that more or less fit its width. One way or another, it was hers now.

Lucy admired the craftsmanship for a second, then had the unpleasant sensation of wheels turning and something almost catching. It was too decorative for one of the standard mercenary types to have been carrying. She turned it over. Not purely ceremonial, though; it was obviously functional and meant to be used, meant to be cleaned. More like something Kraven or one of the other honor-bound psychos would be toting. But the alloy was odd. It was too light, almost. It felt strangely warm, like it wasn’t conducting heat properly. Wakandan? No, not vibranium. She ran her thumb over the hilt. Asgardian. She’d made a thorough ass of herself by going and retrieving that stupid armor, then she’d made a complete and utter ass of herself by chucking it right afterwards. Lucy frowned. She thought. She had, hadn’t she? She’d meant to. She groaned again, a brief image dancing through her mind. A brief image of one of those golden horns in her hand, and the rounded dome of the helm smashing into someone else’s face at high velocity.

She’d dredged incriminating evidence out of the one place nobody else on the entire fucking planet was ever going to find it and then used it as a bludgeon and probably left it at another crime scene. Well, not all of it. She stared at the knife. She’d had the unprecedented forethought to keep at least one piece with her, just in case whoever pulled the report had any doubts about who’d done it and was having trouble connecting it to her. She sighed.

“I am officially the dumbest asshole in the long and storied fucking history of mankind. Maybe I should call up Canada and tell them sorry I’m not sorry while I’m on a roll.” The idea of fighting the entirety of Canada in one go had a certain strange appeal. She chalked it up to her life having become a cosmic rimshot.

Lucy tossed the knife down a storm drain and trudged toward a flickering neon sign advertising “LIQ OR” in garish colors. The wind was picking up, and it felt like a storm was blowing in. She stuck her hands in her pockets and ducked her head against the stinging grit it kicked into the air. She had a few seconds of generalized, self-pitying misery before she was brought to a halt by the smell of blood and the taste of smoke and the feeling of four sharp claws dragging down her back, power crackling across her skin. She spun around and dropped into a crouch, her body moving instinctively even as her muddled brain registered the fact that the attack wasn’t on her. 

Stray images from her dream--no, not a dream, _not a dream_ \--came crashing back over her. _Mjolnir_. She put her hand to her head. She didn’t want to deal with this right now. _Thor_. It was everything she didn’t feel like fucking dealing with right now. He needed her. _A motherfucking dragon_. He probably needed her even more than usual. 

She closed her eyes. How had this become her fucking life? Gods who couldn’t get anything right and then expected her to fix it. Brothers who couldn’t stay out of trouble and then expected her to fix it. Government agents who couldn’t be diplomatic about anything and then expected her to fix it. At what point in fucking time had she been turned into the responsible one? She didn’t remember being invited to the meeting where she’d been voted into office. She didn’t remember taking anything in exchange for waving a magic wand and undoing everybody else’s mistakes and fuck-ups. She didn’t want to fix things. She wanted to break things. Big things. Things that hit back and breathed fire and bled when they broke. She gritted her teeth, and carefully unclenched her fists. She was going to fix it, all right. She was going to fix it so hard that her next jacket was going to be made out of dragon skin.

*****

Thor struggled back to consciousness. Agony was racing along every nerve in his body. His limbs would not obey him. He tried to move, a slow test of injured muscle against the weight of his body, only to find that his arms were bound to a yoke. The angle would not permit more than a minute shift without sharp, tearing bolts of pain. His eyes swept over what he could see of his surroundings. Charred ruin surrounded a green and gold dragon the size of a house. He closed his eyes again. Fafnir. He could hear nothing but the beast-king’s breathing. He’d been accompanied, before the battle. Sif and Fandral. The Einherjar. Loki. No, not Loki. He’d imagined her presence. He’d called out to her for help. She hadn’t been with them. She hadn’t come.

“Awake at last, Odinson?” Fafnir growled, sliding off the melted remains of a boulder. Thor stifled a groan of despair as the dragon stalked around him. The battle had drained him to the dregs. A sharp cry half-escaped him when the beast’s claws tore a set of stripes down his back. He bit down on his lip so hard he felt it split and begin to bleed. A blast of oven-hot air struck the wounds as the dragon snorted. “Do not think yourself fortunate that I’ve spared you for now. I will cast your broken corpse at your father’s feet before putting the spires of Asgard to the torch.”

“You may defeat me, but Asgard will never fall before you,” he spat, trying to lever himself upon onto his knees. 

One huge, sharp-taloned foot settled between his shoulders and pushed him back down with enough force to make his ribs creak. A fanged maw that stank like a funeral pyre hovered mere inches from his face.

“Hey, l don’t want to intrude or anything, but do you think maybe I could just give him a lift to the hospital or something? He’s looking a little bit down for the count over there.” The voice was questioning and thin and shot through with fear, and it took Thor a moment to place it. Lucy. His stomach dropped.

“No,” he whispered. The dragon grinned at him, scaled lips dragging back over sharp teeth.

“What have we here?” Fafnir growled, rearing up on his hind legs to examine the intruder. “A girl-child? How delightful.”

Thor caught sight of her on the far side of the dragon. Her long black hair streamed back from her face when Fafnir beat his wings, and she shielded her eyes. The crisp white blouse and long gray skirt were plastered against her skin by the same force. He could see neither armor nor weapon on her. She seemed even thinner and more fragile than the last time he’d seen her. The picture she presented as she stood against Fafnir was grimly pathetic. The dragon laughed and advanced a step. She started and fell back, jade eyes wide with fear.

“Run!” Thor shouted. He thrashed at the ropes binding him to the yoke and tried to call Mjolnir.

Fafnir dropped to all fours, his long neck snaking toward Lucy. She scrambled back again.

“I’m sure we can work something out,” she stammered, holding her hands up as if she could ward the beast off with that alone.

“Surely,” Fafnir chuckled. “Perhaps in return for my time, you could offer me a few mouthfuls of meat.”

“No! Fafnir, your quarrel is with me!”

“I’d hardly qualify this as a quarrel,” the dragon purred. He struck without further warning, and Thor cringed, expecting the sound of flesh being rent from bone. The teeth closed on thin air with a sharp report. Fafnir barely had time to register the missed strike before the genuine article snapped into focus to the right of his head.

“Ka-pow, motherfucker!” Lucy snarled, swinging a sledgehammer up and connecting with the dragon’s jaw. 

Thor stared at her, barely registering the crunch of bone and the dragon’s howl of pain. She looked like a particularly feral, half-drowned rat. He had a brief, mad pang of pity for the dragon. Fafnir jerked away from her as another blow fell home, this time striking the ankle of a forepaw.

“Loki!” he shouted, renewing his struggles against the rope.

“Just a second!” she called back. “I’m kind of busy here!”

Fafnir reared back and struck at her again, a red froth spilling from his jaws where the hammer had loosened teeth. This time his descent was met with another pair of fangs. Where Lucy had been, an enormous, monstrous serpent coiled. She latched onto Fafnir’s throat, toppling him over backwards and winding around him. She pinned one wing and his undamaged foreleg to his sides, black-and-white-ribbed coils undulating over his ribs as she squeezed. Thor pushed himself out of the way as the dragon’s tail scythed across the ground and almost choked on the ash churned into the air by Fafnir’s struggles. The unfettered wing beat uselessly against Lucy’s head, and black lids clamped down over vertical-pupiled green eyes. The free paw managed to score through her scales and sink into her flesh. Fafnir’s hind legs tore uselessly at the ground, unable to reach the serpent smothering him.

Her jaws worked, rippling along their length without opening or surrendering their grip, and Fafnir shrieked. The loops of muscle constricted around his chest as his lungs emptied, and Thor could hear the dragon’s ribs groan. He watched, horrified and fascinated by turns, as the beast’s frantic struggles yielded ground to the inevitable tightening of Lucy’s coils. Eventually, Fafnir’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he sagged nervelessly in the serpent’s lethal bands. A long several minutes passed, and the only sound Thor could distinguish over his own breathing was the ichor running off Lucy’s fangs to splash against the soot-smeared rock below them. She shuddered eventually and unwound herself from the limp form.

“Is he...?”

The serpent rippled back into the form of the woman, and she sat down heavily, leaning back against her fallen foe.

“His heart’s still going. Fuck if I know what that means in the long run,” she snapped. A row of deep lacerations marked her upper arm, and the fresh blood was running into the old blood staining her shirt.

“Are you all right?” he asked softly, his own wounds forgotten.

“Asks the man who looks like he lost a fight with a rotisserie oven,” Lucy snorted.

“You look as if you have lost several. To a parking lot,” he observed in reply.

“I may have.” She pushed herself to her feet and looked around. After a few seconds, she sighed, picked up the hammer, and used it to crack off one of Fafnir’s fangs. Thor winced. She made her way over to him and began sawing at the ropes lashing him to the yoke.

“You came for me,” he said gratefully.

“I came to beat the shit out of a dragon,” she said, freeing one of his hands. He swayed as the yoke fell to one side, then dragged her against him in a fierce one-armed embrace.

“You came for me, brother,” he insisted gently.

She pushed him away, but without heat, and didn’t stop him from leaning on her. She went back to cutting the rest of the rope, and he could feel her hands shaking. “I’m not your brother, Thor.”

“Sister,” he amended.

“I’m not that, either.” Lucy tore at the bindings savagely. Thor hissed in pain as the rope dug into burned flesh. She pulled him free and took him by the shoulders. “If I heal you, do you promise not to fucking hug me again?”

“I will do my best,” he assured her. “Are Sif and Fandral...?”

“Damned if I know.” She scowled in concentration, and he felt the pain recede. Blisters and wounds were supplanted by unbroken, unburned skin. His ribs knit themselves together, and his joints moved smoothly once more. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to his chest.

“What did I just fucking say?” she demanded, her words muffled by his neck.

“My best wasn’t good enough,” he apologized. He kissed the top of her head before letting her go. “Thank you, sister.”

She grunted wordlessly and pushed her matted hair out of her face. She looked around blankly for a few seconds before seeming to come back to herself. “So, I actually can’t sense your bros. At all. Which seems like it might be a pretty bad sign, because you guys are generally pretty obvious when you’re on-planet. If your bodyguards here are any indication of how this went down, they could be in bad shape.”

“Fandral was badly wounded. I commanded Sif to take him to safety. Did you see the Bifrost open?”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t really looking, though. This might come as something of a shock, but I didn’t exactly show up in the best shape.”

He hesitated, his eyes on her bleeding arm. She waved him off and started fixing her own injuries. He called Mjolnir to his hand and gave her one last, apologetic glance.

“I will--”

His words were lost in a howl of wind and an explosion of light. Lucy had a fractured moment to think that the feel of the Bifrost opening from a distance was nothing like having it open right in her fucking face, to realize that she was hauling Thor down and pushing him behind her, and to wonder what the hell was wrong with her that she thought shoving him at the dragon and away from whoever was coming through from Asgard was a good idea. Thor had a heartbeat to wonder if she would flee, darting away into the shadows only to emerge somewhere he couldn’t follow, before he had caught her against him. One hand was around her wrist, gripping like an iron band, and the other was tangled in her jacket.

“Fafnir!” Thor’s stomach lurched with the memory of the last time his father had saddled Sleipnir and come to his rescue. “You will face me!”

The golden light faded somewhat as Odin registered what he was seeing. Lucy stared back at him. Thor silently begged the Norns to be merciful and didn’t relax his hold on Lucy.

“Loki?” Odin breathed.

“Nope,” Lucy retorted automatically.

“Yes,” Thor answered.

“I’m not above turning back into an anaconda,” she hissed at him.

“You did this?” Odin asked, his eye moving to the dragon still sprawled behind them.

“Yes,” she admitted. “Well. The dragon-injuring part of it. Not the burning-everything-down and slaughtering-everybody parts of it. That was, uh, Fahrvergnugen. You know. Being a dragon. I guess.”

“Fafnir,” Thor corrected softly.

“The day I have to get all of you motherfucker’s names right all the time is the day I crawl into an active volcano and don’t come out until the apocalypse,” she growled, back on firmer footing with him than she had been with Odin.

“Thor?” Odin prompted, his gaze moving from his son to the magician.

“Father.” Thor swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. He could feel Lucy’s muscles tensing at the word. Her eyes were narrowing, and her shoulders were settling into that angry jut he remembered so well. Nothing good ever came afterwards. She was gone a second later, leaving him grasping at air and Odin reaching for nothing.


	29. Chapter 29

Thor paced restlessly. Sif had promised to send word the moment Fandral was out of danger, and he knew she wouldn’t neglect to keep it. He was worried, but not unduly so. Fandral’s wounds had been grievous, but the healers knew their business. Lucy had healed his own injuries well enough that their healers could find no quarrel to pick with her work, which meant that the most skilled could focus their efforts on his companion. The others had sustained minor wounds which had been looked after by the novices. The dead Einherjar would be mourned after the Allfather came back. His father had promised--or perhaps threatened--that they would speak as soon as he returned from re-working Fafnir’s bonds. He was at loose ends until someone summoned him. He was dreading the summons.

Sif had been duty-bound to report the events surrounding Amora’s attack. Frigga had been increasingly firm about the necessity of accepting Loki’s loss and increasingly sharp about the Midgardians fostering his conviction. Odin....Thor groaned at the memory of his father’s expression, when he’d seen Lucy. He couldn’t remember ever having seen his father genuinely shocked before. The sight had unnerved him more than he cared to admit. He stopped and leaned on a balustrade, his eyes tracing the borders of the garden below without truly seeing them. As weakened as Jotunheim had been by Loki’s attack, they were still an intractable enemy. One intractable enemy among many. The strength of arms and his father’s power was all that stood between them and bloody conquest of all nine realms. It was uncomfortable to feel doubt in that power, and he wished, even more strongly than usual, that he still had Loki’s counsel.

As often as he’d had to serve as a buffer between Loki and the rest of the court, Loki had been his buffer against the demands of diplomacy and more delicate problems. He wondered what cutting joke Loki would make about the problem posed _by_ his absence in the matter of dealing _with_ his absence. His hand curled instinctively into a fist, missing the reassuring weight of Mjolnir. The loss of his brother still felt like the loss of a limb. If he’d had Loki’s facility with words, he might have been able to explain the way he _knew_ \--knew it down to his bones--that it was Loki looking back from the mortal magician’s eyes in terms of something other than the sensation of wholeness he felt when they were together. 

He sighed and went back to pacing. It was not a thing easily communicated. He simply felt _whole_ when she was present. The gnawing dread that had plagued him since Loki’s fall was banished. He had hope that what had been broken might be mended. The emptiness returned like a black tide whenever she had her fill of tolerating him and vanished. It was difficult not to pursue her. It was difficult to remember that, while Loki might have sat and sulked and fumed if no one came to at least try soothing him out of his rage, it generally served only to inflame Lucy further. She would not be disobeyed lightly on that score. Loki had craved their approval and affection. He’d clung to his place in the family like it could be taken from him. Even before he’d discovered his heritage, it was as if he’d feared being set aside or cast out or somehow separated from them. He’d fought it with every weapon at his disposal. Lucy was openly contemptuous of anyone else’s opinion, and she avoided entanglements as if they pained her. She would not consent to stay.

Thor ran his hands through his hair. No matter how badly they’d quarreled or what words had passed between them, it had never once crossed his mind that Loki might leave. They were brothers. They were the Allfather’s sons. Asgard was their _home_. Abandoning each other, or Asgard, was unthinkable. Time might pass, but they would eventually find a way to reconcile. They would mend the breach and be of one mind again. That Loki might choose to let go and fall forever rather than stay had shaken him even more than mortality had. 

That Loki had not, after all, gone very far was not as comforting as it might have been. Lucy would not permit him to close the gap, and he had hope, yes, but few ideas. A millennium of tactics refined against an opponent who was rarely truly _opposed_ to him left him with no idea how to handle a brother who wouldn’t admit to the relationship and wouldn’t hold still long enough for a proper fight with a proper victor. He was torn between hoping their parents could handle it more skillfully and shame at not having been able to persuade Lucy to return. It had been Loki’s fight with him that had resulted in his death. It was his wrong to right. He had so far failed. Confessing as much to his mother seemed more than he could bear.

A soft knock on the door brought him back to himself. He looked up and met Sif’s eyes.

“Fandral?” he asked.

“Will be fine. The healers have outdone themselves,” she said, managing a wan smile. “What of your own wounds? You were not so whole when you bid us leave you on the battlefield.”

“Loki.”

“She healed you?” Sif asked, her eyes narrowing. “How did she know you needed her?”

“I called her, and she came. I wasn’t the one to defeat Fafnir,” he explained. “She was in something of a temper when she arrived. She took it out on him.”

“I saw something of that when the Allfather carted him back to Nastrond. He looked rather the worse for wear.”

“She transformed herself into a monstrous serpent and choked the breath from his body.”

“Someone should tell Amora. Perhaps she’ll take her own usage at the woman’s hands less personally,” Sif snorted. “It would seem that she could have come away from the fight with far more than her pride damaged.”

“I’ll be sure to mention it if we ever catch her again,” Thor sighed.

“I’ve brought you good news, and your wild Midgardian sorceress is showing signs of being tamed. Shouldn’t you be looking a little less grim?” she asked.

“She was still with me when father arrived.”

“He didn’t believe you?”

“No.” Thor sighed. “He saw her exactly as I see her.”

“I would think that would please you,” Sif said carefully, studying his face.

“My greatest missteps have come from thinking of her as too much like Loki as we remember him, before I was banished,” he explained, leaning against the wall. “She tolerates me. I do not know if I can persuade Father to leave her be for now, and I’m afraid of what his persistence might provoke her to.”

“Surely Frigga will think of something?” she offered.

“The thought of telling Mother that I truly found Loki and still haven’t been able to bring him home frightens me more than any battle in the nine realms.” He rubbed his eyes. “But enough of that. Is Fandral fit to receive visitors?”

“Nothing would make him happier,” she grunted. “Unfortunately for us both, the healers have forbidden it until he’s had some sleep. I came myself because they kicked us out of the sick room.” She chewed her lip. “Do you think it might help if I spoke with Loki?”

His brows furrowed for a moment. “I thought you were still angry at him?”

“I am. But I’ve been angry with him before, and we’ve all lived to tell the tale.” She shrugged. “Besides which, I don’t feel any particular need to insist that he’s my brother, so my presence might be less irritating than yours for the time being.”

“I can’t ask this of you,” he said after a few seconds’ thought. “She _is_ dangerous. She looked even more disreputable than usual, and that was before she engaged Fafnir.”

“You don’t have to ask. And I know she’s dangerous. I hadn’t planned on giving her much excuse to strike at me, though, and she doesn’t seem so mindless a beast as that.” Sif reached up and touched his face gently. “I miss him, too, Thor. It would be a great relief to have this settled.”

“Thank you, Sif.” He put his hand over hers. “And be careful.”

*****

“Rise and shine, Jones,” Coulson chirped. Lucy cracked an eyelid and glared at him. It was too bright and too noisy. She slapped at her pockets before giving up and conjuring a pair of sunglasses to shove onto her face.

“Okay, I’ll bite. If I don’t know where I am, how do _you_ know where I am?” she grumbled.

“Strange wants that dragon tooth you’ve got sticking out of your pocket. He was uncharacteristically helpful on the promise of me bringing it back with you.”

“Strange can blow me. I took it off the dragon fair and square.”

“I don’t suppose you happened to see if your brother made it back to Asgard okay? Jan’s been worried about Jane, and Jane’s been worried about him.”

“He’s not my brother, and he was fine when I left him in the custody of his father, so I can only assume that he stayed that way.” She sat up and conjured a pack of cigarettes. “Are we under an overpass?”

“Yes. It’s nice to see that your taste in accommodations hasn’t suffered the same degradation as your bank account.”

“You know what the last thing I remember is? Beating a fucking _dragon_ into the dirt. You should probably be a little nicer to me,” she grumbled.

“You smell like a hobo, you look like you murdered a hobo for her clothes, and I haven’t had the chance to go home in the past week.” Coulson dropped two reams’ worth of paper next to her hip. “You know what that is?”

“You catch this case in the middle of copying Fury’s OkCupid profile for a FOIA request?” she asked. “Maybe he should lay off with the surveys.”

“Your arrest warrant.”

“That seems excessive,” she protested, eyeing it more closely.

“It does, doesn’t it?” he asked brightly.

“You seem pretty cheerful for a guy who just killed a forest to print out a list of charges you’re not going to be able to bring me in on.”

He took a deep breath and spread his hands. “I’m not even upset any more. I think it was right around the third time I had to reload the printer so I could bring a hard copy with me that I just started being impressed. You realize this is double-sided, right? Never mind the forest, I killed a toner cartridge. And this is just what we _know_ about.”

“So I started some barfights. With people you’d be starting fights with, if you’d been there.” She shrugged. “Big deal.”

He stared at her. “You started barfights? That’s what you think this is about?”

“Enlighten me, if that’s not why you’re here.”

“Five international incidents. You had everyone speaking Farsi for a day. The Hoover Dam is in a state of quantum flux, which isn’t actually a problem except for everyone involved in its daily upkeep having a nervous breakdown every time they try to look at it. Every station in Duluth is still broadcasting nothing but Telemundo. Every bottle of water in DC was turned into wine.”

“They’re welcome.”

“The entire internet decided to do nothing but show everyone cat pictures for twenty-four hours. You got every hedge-fund manager in the continental US high during that same period of time. You pulled that same stunt you hit AIM’s robots with on our drones. They’ve converged on Amsterdam’s red-light district, and they’re hiring escorts with money they apparently got by selling their payloads to anybody with two cents to rub together.”

“You say that like paying some working ladies is somehow the worst thing a drone’s ever done. Maybe they got sick of blowing up wedding parties and cafes.”

He fixed her with a disapproving glare. “Congress has passed more legislation--all of it highly suspect--in the past week than the previous four years. While wearing stripper heels.” She snickered. “It’s not funny. Five senators have broken ankles now.” She snickered again. “Everyone in Canada is incredibly angry with you.”

“What did I do now?”

“What didn’t you do? You called every DJ in Quebec and told them, in English, that they were ‘vile queen-humpers.’ You bought air-time to run commercials--in English, French, and _mime_ \--during prime-time that invited viewers to visit Maine, which was described as ‘Newfoundland without the seal-murder.’ You turned Walter Langkowski’s fur red and white.”

“Did I put a maple leaf over his junk?”

“No!” Coulson colored slightly.

“So I owe Canada an apology is what you’re saying.” She smiled thinly at him, and he gave her a long look. “Message received. They’re a forgiving people, though. Very, you know, _Canadian_. And not all of them have easy access to media. I don’t think they’re _all_ mad at me.”

“You insulted hockey,” he pressed on. 

Lucy grunted noncommittally. “It’s an overrated sport.”

“And poutine.”

“Poutine is gross.”

“And you permanently changed Stephen Harper’s ringtone to “Party Up”*.”

“Dude’s a douche.”

“And you turned every donut in every Tim Horton’s into a bagel.”

“Okay, that might have crossed a line,” she admitted.

“Oh, and you gave bears thumbs.”

“Ah.”

“And a taste for recliners. And central heating.”

“They already had the last two,” she pointed out. “All that got spun out into that boss hog of a warrant?”

“I’d be here all day if I went through every single thing you did. Get up.”

“No. I like it here.”

“You do not. You’re in a pile of trash under a highway. And Hawkeye won’t stop bugging me to get his quiver done.”

“There’s a joke in there that I’m not drunk enough to make yet.”

“I should warn you that he’s going to have kidnapping added to that pile if you don’t deliver, and I’m going to advise you that I’ll drop half of this if you promise not to get drunk enough to make that joke in my presence.”

“No, you won’t.” Lucy got to her feet. “Come on. Let’s find a Denny’s and get some disgusting approximation of actual food. My treat.”

Coulson sighed. “It’s funny, but any inclination I might have had to take you up on the offer mysteriously vanished when you put it that way.”

“Come on, Coulson. Crawl out of the Stone Ages. It’s okay to let a lady pay for your meal.”

“I thought you said it was your treat?” he asked, eyebrows rising.

“Wow. That’s how we’re going to do this? Really?” she laughed. “Because I’m not above turning your shoes into whoopee cushions. I genuinely am not.”

“You know how some cats are hairless?”

“I’m vaguely aware of this as a fact and vaguely suspicious of where this is going.”

“You’re only vaguely aware of it? Are you sure?”

“Spit it out, Coulson.”

“They’ve all spontaneously grown full coats.”

“Good for them.” Lucy snapped her fingers, and the tattered remnants of her clothing transformed into new, whole versions of themselves. She ran her fingers through her hair, and it untangled and unfouled.

“I doubt they had much to do with it.”

“Nonsense. You familiar with the hundredth monkey effect?”

He glowered at her. “Your explanation for that one is that the cats somehow achieved critical mass and believed themselves into growing fur again.”

“Maybe that 24 hours of lolcats had something to do with it.” She shrugged. “Animal psychology and cat-herding really aren’t my areas of expertise. So, to Denny’s.”

“You want to fill me in on what happened with Fafnir?” Phil asked, walking after her.

“Uh, I defeated a dragon in single combat,” she snorted. “Dust off hands, ride off into sunset. I can now officially do anything I put my mind to. Case closed.”

“How did you come to be there?”

“Thor asked me to,” Lucy said, waving her hands. “I was feeling kind of feisty, so I decided to take a shot. I won. His dad showed up. Probably Sif called him? Anyway, it seemed like he was okay, so I went back to doing what I was doing before he asked for help.”

“Sleeping under a bridge.”

“Sure? I mean, I figure I’m _living_ my life. I don’t really need to be that obsessed with exactly what I’m doing at any given time. It’s not like I don’t have you to come tell me about it if I forget I did something.” She sucked at a molar. “You’re like my own personal documentarian.”

“If that were true, I’d need a raise,” Phil told her flatly. A handful of drifters scuttled out of their way, and Phil looked a bit harder at one of them. “Why did that man look ready to wet himself when he saw you?”

She frowned. “Oh, I think that’s the guy who asked me for a few bucks last night.”

“And?”

“I told him I’d give him a few wishes instead.” Her smile had a sharp edge to it.

“What’d he ask for?”

“Me to get the fuck away from him.”

“Smart man,” Phil muttered.

“Indeed. Can I ask you a question? What’s up with Odin’s eye? He and Fury play lawn darts together as children?”

“What?”

“Odin’s missing an eye, too. Got a super-fancy gold patch for it and everything. You never noticed?”

“I’ve never met him,” Phil said testily, breaking into a trot to keep up with her.

“Who were you dealing with besides Thor, then?”

“Frigga. Thor’s mother. As I understand it, Odin doesn’t often leave Asgard unless there’s an absolute emergency.”

“Like a dragon ripping his son a new breathing-hole?” Lucy grunted, stopping at a crosswalk. She looked back over her shoulder. “So where was Funfeñero from?”

“What?”

“The dragon,” she clarified. “Where was it from?”

“I assumed it was from here,” Phil said carefully. “Wasn’t it?”

“Well, I’ve never met a dragon before, but that thing sure as hell didn’t _feel_ like it was from here. It didn’t quite feel like the Asgardians did, either, but it had a lot more in common with them than anything I’ve run into on this planet. And it seemed to have some specific beef with Thor and Asgard.” She shrugged. “When did it first show up on your radar?” 

“That’s classified.”

“Stark smashed into it while flying under the influence, didn’t he?”

“It’s not as classified as _that_ ,” Phil said.

“Man. You know, War Machine needs a fucking raise. You people cannot possibly be paying him enough to put up with Stark and all of Stark’s adventures in redaction.”

“The dragon, Jones.”

“Beef with Asgard. Threatened to torch the place. Tried to kill Thor. Killed a bunch of the dudes with the funky helmets. You know, the ones that look like they’re wearing a big fucking stag beetle made of gold on their heads?”

“The Einherjar?”

“Gesundheit.” He glared at her, and she gave him her least sincere smile. “I think he fucked up Sif and Fandral, too. Didn’t really stop to get his life story before I put him down.”

“And what method did you use to, as you said, ‘put him down’?” Phil asked wearily.

“Nuh-uh. An Alliance magician never gives away how a trick is done,” she scolded.

“If I say ‘a trick is something a whore does for money,’ will you tell me?”

Lucy gave him a long, irritated look. “Why do you always have to cheapen the moment, Coulson? Is it so hard to just be a normal fucking human being? How much starch does SHIELD have to cram into agents’ briefs before they achieve this level of,” she gestured vaguely, “ _you_?”

“That’s hurtful, Jones.”

“It’s meant to be, Coulson. You know what? Fuck Denny’s. There’s a chicken-and-waffles joint right down the road. I can see it from here.” She looked at him out of the side of her eye. “Before you say anything, I took that dragon out with a sledgehammer. Just so you know which end of the pool you’re diving into when you make that face.”

“A sledgehammer,” he repeated. The knot of pedestrians around them was sidling away nervously.

“A sledgehammer. I hit it with a fucking sledgehammer, and then I turned into a motherfucking _prehistoric_ -sized anaconda, and I squeezed the life out of that reptilian son of a bitch.” She pantomimed strangling it. “Just _bam_. Done. Because I am _awesome_.” She pushed up one sleeve to reveal a set of raw pink stripes. “That’s what I walked away with. You know, from killing a goddamned dragon.” She took a drag off her cigarette. “If this were the middle ages, I’d be fucking canonized by now. They’d have gotten the Pope out of bed for it.”

“Pretty sure you have to be dead before you’re canonized,” Phil pointed out, giving a reassuring smile to an elderly woman who was muttering something and crossing herself.

“You kill a dragon, they make exceptions. Probably on the assumption that if you go around killing dragons, it’s not going to be too terribly fucking long in coming.”

“Any idea when Thor’s coming back?”

Lucy shrugged. “I wasn’t sure he was _gone_ until you told me.”

“Barton said you claimed that you could tell where he was.”

“Okay, you caught me. I sensed a great disturbance in the force the second he left. It’s been like a blade piercing my breast since then. My heart aches with his absence.”

“You know, there’s really no need to be unpleasant about it,” Phil said.

“By the same token, there’s really no need to be pleasant about it, either.” She shrugged. “I can tell where he is. I am not, however, obsessed with his whereabouts. Dude was fine, dude was with his dad, dude can take care of himself.”

“Dude’s an alien prince.”

Lucy stopped and tilted her head. “You know, I didn’t actually think it was _possible_ for you to sound like more of a narc than usual.”

“So glad I can still surprise you,” he said drily.

She scented the air. “You smell that, Coulson?”

“It smells like chicken. And waffles.”

“Freedom, Coulson. It smells like _freedom_.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “And breakfast,” she relented.

*****

“Jones says that you ninnies can stop worrying about Prince Hammertime,” Tony announced without looking up from his phone.

“He’s paraphrasing,” Steve said reflexively, looking apologetically at Jane. “I think? Jones can be a little rude sometimes.”

“It’s true,” Tony said brightly. “She called him Commander Hotpants to his face once.”

“I don’t think she really needed to know that, Tony,” Steve sighed, flushing brightly.

“Is she really trustworthy? Thor....Well, he tries to speak highly of her. That he has to qualify everything so often worries me.” Jane rubbed her arms and looked from one face to the next.

“She’s a magical fairydust trainwreck,” Clint told her. “But the corollary to that is that she doesn’t tend to lie about this sort of thing. She doesn’t care enough to. If she didn’t want to answer, she’d just tell Phil to go to hell or tell him some obviously fake story.”

“She says she beat a dragon to death with a sledgehammer,” Tony piped up helpfully. Jane looked at Clint, her eyes wide.

“That’s, um, that’s not actually that fake-sounding. For her,” Jan sighed.

“She arranged an Elvis parade in Las Vegas once because she was bored,” Steve said, backing her up.

“She impersonated the Abomination while performing a Rolling Stones number because she wasn’t closely supervised on a mission,” Bruce added.

“She organized a goat stampede _and_ a polar bear stampede in two separate states to cover up the Abomination thing,” Tony said. “Because she’s not a very good person. Besides, how much trouble could this guy have possibly given Thor? He’s a dragon, not the Destroyer.”

“If Thor is fine, then where _is_ he?” Jane asked.

“Looks like he’s back in Asgard. Jones says Odin showed up, at which point she took off. Probably to go start more shit with the Canadians before passing out under a bridge in California.”

“What’s her problem with Canada, anyway?” Steve asked, shaking his head. “It’s a beautiful country, and the people tend to be very nice.”

“She’s _not a very good person_ ,” Tony repeated.

“I think it started out as a fight with one Canadian, over something highly classified, and then it got a little out of hand, because it’s Jones, and then it got even more out of hand, because _it’s Jones_.” Jan sighed and shot Jane an encouraging smile. She glanced at Tony. “Why is Coulson texting you and not Steve?”

“Oh, he’s not. I put a bug on him. It’s what’s texting me.”

“Tony!” Clint hissed.

“Really? You guys are honestly going to pretend that’s not a wise precaution, given the tear she’s been on lately? Because I genuinely would not have expected any of you to make that claim. Coulson coughs at the wrong time, we could be begging Strange to come turn him back into a human being instead of the world’s most lifelike butter sculpture.”

“Okay, no, I’m not going to pretend it’s not a good idea to take precautions,” Clint said, “but did you stop for a second and consider what _Phil_ is going to do to _you_ when he finds that bug?”

Tony gave him a long look before sighing theatrically. “Barton, why do you insist on asking questions you already know the answer to?”

“That would be a no, then,” he said sourly.

“I’m sure Agent Coulson wouldn’t do anything permanent,” Steve protested. They all looked at him. “Reasonably sure. Mostly. He doesn’t actually enjoy doing paperwork any more than the rest of us do, you know.”

“Anything else of interest?” Jan asked, shaking her head.

“Uh, nothing more about Thor.” Tony scrolled back through the message history. “Jones isn’t taking back any of the stuff she said about hockey or poutine, so we’re probably stuck doing that good-will tour after all.”

“How is something a villain’s been doing suddenly our problem, again?” she demanded.

“Well, Fury let Thor go public, and then Thor got really popular, and then Thor said she’s his sister,” Tony explained with irritating slowness. “So now we get to go apologize profusely because of stuff she said, and apologize profusely again because of that national monument he turned into toothpicks because someone who Canada doesn’t want to admit exists got them both high. I can pull up the holographic whiteboard and get a laser pointer if you need me to break it down even further.”

Jan glared at him. “Coulson’s going to have to get in line at this point, Tony.”

“Was that a threat? After I got you a dodo? At significant risk to life and limb and ability to visit our neighbor to the north?”

“You owed me that bird because I did you a favor,” she reminded him. “Has Jones said anything else about that dragon?”

“Uh...’one toke over the line,’ she’ll ‘a pack of lies’ after ‘the a pox on both your houses’.” Tony grimaced, and then offered Jane a brightly apologetic smile. “The speech-to-text function might still be a little buggy.”

“You think?” Clint groaned. Jane looked even more skeptical than she had earlier.

“Well, she could also be high.”

“Tony, if you were going to bug Coulson, why didn’t you just use a normal bug and have it transmit audio directly?” Steve asked, his brows furrowing.

“Because you can’t pretend you’re just checking your phone with audio. Duh. Dammit. I just lost signal, anyway. That’s the problem with prototypes.”

*****

“So, do you want to talk about it?”

“About what?” Lucy asked, taking a long draw on her soda. She propped her elbows on the plastic table and scooted further back along the booth’s bench seat.

Phil gave her a hard look. “You’ve been on a very public, week-long rampage. That usually means that something’s going on with you.”

“Not my therapist, Coulson. And I’m done. I was dealing with some things, and now I’m done dealing with them.”

“You know, typically when something results in a warrant that could wrap around the globe twice, that doesn’t qualify as ‘dealing with’ something. That’s more of a tantrum.”

“Isn’t a tantrum definitionally a prolonged, cathartic emotional outburst? To whit, a way of dealing with something?” she asked archly. “Granted, not exactly the healthiest or most emotionally mature way of handling something, but still, you know, a way.”

“Have I ever told you that tautology is my absolute _least_ favorite type of rhetoric?”

“You might have, but I genuinely don’t see that having been pertinent to prior conversations. I mean, I’m trying to come up with something, but I really don’t think it would have applied to any of the crap you’re in the habit of yelling at me about. Like, even the test run of the one horse-sized duck versus a hundred duck-sized horses question didn’t really involve much in the way of universal, self-referencing axioms. And let’s face it, you’re really not the random-confession type.”

“So you don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

“Nope.”

“Okay. Then tell me about Odin.”

Lucy tore into a waffle and chewed it thoughtfully. “He’s kind of a big dude? One eye? Lots of gold? Looked pretty old? Rides a horse with too many legs? I have no idea if that’s just the one horse, or if that’s just how Asgardian horses roll, or if maybe they’ve got that weird parasitic flatworm that turns frogs into their own conjoined twins. Didn’t stop to ask. Maybe you should have been asking his kid about this if you cared?”

“Thor’s first duty is to Asgard,” Phil pointed out.

“Mmm. But I don’t like you guys in specific, I’m not a huge fan of the current incarnation of the governmental apparatus in general, and you personally showed up to roust me with an arrest warrant the size of the Superdome.”

“So you sympathize with Asgard over us?” he snorted.

She laughed. “I don’t know enough about it to say one way or another. No. Just a reminder that your intelligence failures aren’t my problem.”

“Did he see you?”

“Yup.”

“Was his assessment the same as Thor’s?”

“Yup.” She glanced down at his tray. “Eat your fries, Coulson.”

“How big of a problem did you just cause us?”

“Um. Hmm. It occurs to me that I may not have handled that meeting in the best of possible ways.” Lucy wiped her mouth. “Okay, so you know when your family’s kind of dysfunctional and your relatives get on your case and you just kind of bust out with ‘You’re not my dad’ or ‘You’re not my _real_ dad’ and then storm out and slam a door or two?”

“Jesus Christ, Jones.” Phil’s shoulders slumped a little.

“So, what you’re feeling right now? I want you to keep that really, really firmly just _lodged_ right in your mind for comparison,” she picked a strip of meat off the bone, “because I didn’t do that. I mean, I’m not going to claim I handled it _well_ , but I didn’t get all after-school special on anybody.”

“What _did_ you do?”

“Denied being Loki, babbled a lot about that fucking dragon, and then ran the fuck away.”

“Smooth,” he commented.

“Not in my skill-set.”

“You can be when you want to be.”

“Not around royal aliens.” She popped a chunk of waffle in her mouth. “Who think they’re my parents.”

“You do realize that this doesn’t further your own goals either?” Phil asked.

“Yeah, I do,” she said, her tone flinty. “Contrary to what sometimes seems to be an incredibly wide-spread opinion, I’m not a fucking idiot, Coulson. This? Doesn’t further my goals, doesn’t further your goals, and presumably doesn’t further the goals of grieving parents who didn’t need this shit today. It furthers the goals of precisely zero fucking people. If I’d thought for a second about what was likely coming out of the interdimensional portal doohickey, I’d have bolted before he saw me. I didn’t, because I’d just gotten through with an extraplanetary monster-fight. Shit happens.”

“That’s not an acceptable response, Jones.”

“That’s not an--? Go fuck yourself, Coulson. I don’t work for you,” she reminded him. “And while I do have an extremely detached appreciation of the difficulty this might possibly, conceivably put you in, I’m pretty sure I also told you guys, repeatedly and explicitly, not to play into this.”

“You’re not concerned with the difficulty this might possibly put _you_ in?” he retorted.

“Here’s the thing: I only really have brain-space to worry about one completely fucked-up thing at a time. So while I’m genuinely sorry for any shock I gave the dude, and by proxy any shock the dude goes home and passes along to Thor’s mom, I’ll worry about that the _political ramifications_ after I get done saving the world from the creator-god version of _Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein_. Assuming I survive. Which I guess is a silver lining if I don’t?” She brightened a little. “Wouldn’t have to settle up with the IRS, either. Or deal with whatever bullshit my aunt’s been up to.”

“You’re going to be saving the world?” Phil asked, surprised.

“It happens every so often. Ask Strange about it. He’s probably up to his ass in Sumerian doom brigades and Incan death curses and Pangean cyclotronic disco-balls on a rotating basis.” She shrugged. “Goes with the territory, though I usually have better luck keeping myself clear of it.”

“I’m revising my opinion of magic’s utility.”

“Like science has a better track record,” Lucy snorted. ”Anyway, as I was saying. They’re next in line. I’ll apologize after the apocalypse.”

“I don’t think this is the sort of thing you apologize for, Jones,” Phil sighed. She rolled her eyes, reached over, plucked something from under his collar, and crushed it.

“Bug,” she explained. “And I’d prefer not to get this blaster back at me at 120 decibels from Stark’s loudspeakers the next time I have to punch him through a hardened installation.” He frowned and looked more closely at the mangled flecks of electronics she sprinkled on the table.

“So, here’s the thing, _Agent_. I know _exactly_ what sort of thing this is. You’ve had time to pull my file together, yeah? You’ve had time to go hassle my elementary school teachers? Track down my social services files? Look into what a headcase my aunt is? Shake your head over what might have been if it weren’t for that _tragic car crash_?” Her eyes hardened. “Yeah?”

“Yes. We’ve had time to do all of those things,” he said quietly.

“Okay, then. Guess fucking what? I could have had my parents back if I’d left Thor in the underworld. That was put on the table. And I turned it down, because they’re not my parents any more. They’re someone else’s kids. They’re going to be someone else’s parents, given the opportunity. I had my time with them. It’s over. It’s not coming back. They had their time with their son. It’s over. It’s not coming back. So while this might not be the sort of thing you apologize over, ‘sorry’ is really all the universe has for it. Your options are an apology or a fuck you.”

“I see.”

“Not really, but I think you’re closer to seeing.” She shrugged. “It’s shitty that this is dragging them back into the wringer. I wish I could have spared them that. But maybe that wasn’t really avoidable. Maybe it was re-open those wounds or lose Thor. I don’t know. I just know that, whatever they’re _owed_ , what they’re getting is an apology and a better luck next time.”

“Try to keep in mind that they are gods,” Phil pointed out.

Lucy, slightly taken aback, let out a short, sharp bark of a laugh. “That’s kind of a hard thing to forget, Coulson. Fortunately, I’ve had a few crash courses in disappointing divinities recently.”

Phil waited a few moments before saying, “Thor found the social services files particularly upsetting.”

“You showed all that shit to Thor? You can be a real dickhole sometimes, Coulson.” She rubbed her eyes. “Just tell me you didn’t let Stark wade around in it.”

“Your criminal file isn’t exactly confidential, Jones.”

Lucy arched an eyebrow. “In which case, you may want to advise him that he will have an _extremely_ hard time operating that armor if I feel the need to turn him into a sea lion over jokes about my second-grade penmanship.”

“Is this where I advise you that I have very little confidence in your ability to save the world?” Phil asked.

“You can do that at any point,” she spat. “But I just beat a dragon, and I’m going to beat that fucking scorpion, and then I’m going to convince you guys to pony up for family counseling for the Asgardians, and then I’m going to, uh....” She seemed to lose her train of thought, and her eyes focused over Phil’s shoulder. “I’m going to get more waffles. You want anything?”

“You’ve had something like three whole chickens and more waffles than Belgium. Hasn’t that put a dent in your appetite?” he asked.

“I think I spent most of the week not eating, and turning into a huge snake is, um, what’s the term? Metabolically demanding? Depleting?” She shrugged. “Anyway, _this_ is, I think, text-book not dealing with something.”

Phil twisted around, followed her previous line of sight, and felt his jaw drop open. On the news, in what looked like New York, Doom was hectoring a large crowd.

“What in god’s name is he _wearing_?” he asked. He looked at Lucy. “Did you do this?”

“I have no idea what any of that is. None. Whatever the hell’s going on there, I just hope that he’s, uh, happy. And being, um, true to himself. Like I said, one completely fucked-up thing at a time. _That_ , whatever it is, is completely fucked up, and not really my problem, and consequently is getting knocked right to the bottom of the list. If it’s still happening after I’m done with everything else, and nothing more important has come up in the meantime, I might-- _might_ \--consider staging an intervention or turning the most embarrassing half of that monstrosity invisible or whatever. But as it is, I’m genuinely not seeing much appeal to getting involved in Doom’s private meltdowns if I don’t have to. Have fun trying to get him to put regular pants back on, though. I have it on good authority that once you’ve gotten used to wearing traffic cones as codpieces, there really isn’t any going back to jeans.”

“Are you _positive_ you didn’t have anything to do with this?”

“Mind control isn’t really something I can do, Coulson. So even if I dressed him like that, he’d _know_ he was dressed like that, and I don’t see him leaving the huge theme-park-sized castle he calls a house dressed like that under normal, as-in-his-right-mind-as-he-ever-gets circumstances.” She chewed a fingernail. “Unless....”

“Of course there’s an unless,” Phil muttered.

“Well, I took the opportunity to fuck with some of his stuff when I was stealing his time machine and burning his shit down. le Fay might have finally found one of the personal-life IEDs I left behind. This isn’t really her MO, but most people aren’t stupid enough to run around on powerful, vindictive, immortal sorceresses, so I don’t really have anything to compare it to.”

“What did you do?”

“I borrowed some...things from the Baxter Building. And relocated them to Doom’s dresser drawers. Inside trophy cases.”

“What things?” he asked wearily.

“You yelled at me the last time I elaborated, so you can just fuck off this time.” She crossed her arms and waited for the harried-looking cook to shove her waffles across the counter. “And this might not have anything to do with that. Maybe you can only be that ridiculously evil and gloomy for so long before you finally sail right off the deep end and turn into Lord Humungus’s unbelievably fashion-impaired cousin.”

Phil’s phone buzzed. He looked at it and sighed heavily. He’d hoped dealing with Jones would have exempted him from having to address the situation being broadcast live on CNN.

“Duty calls,” he called, getting up. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to help out?”

“Nope. I’m busy. I’ve got important magician shit to do.” He gave her a hard look, and she cocked her head and smirked. “Important. Magician. Shit.”

“Don’t leave town.”

“Screw you, I’ll go wherever I want,” she sang back. She tossed him the tooth she’d taken from Fafnir and waved as he left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DMX. ...And Then There Was X, “Party Up (Up in Here).”


	30. Chapter 30

“Hey, Barton.”

Clint spun and threw a reflexive punch. Lucy caught his fist in one hand and gave him a disappointed look over the top of her sunglasses at him.

“Jesus Christ, Jones!” he gasped, sagging a little. “What are you _doing_ here?”

“Well, I got a series of texts that you might not remember sending. Would you like me to read them off in order of attitude?”

“That was a week ago.”

“And then Agent Coulson showed up and threatened to file every charge on the planet if I didn’t come through, because you’re his favorite.” She looked around thoughtfully. “You probably shouldn’t tell Romanoff, though.”

“That was yesterday.”

“Yes, but you were all in close proximity to Doom and his new _idiom_ yesterday, and whatever the hell was going on there, it wasn’t my bag.”

“I don’t even have my quiver with me. This is a _social_ call,” he protested. “I don’t come to your parties and try to conduct business.”

“Okay, seriously? You come to my parties and try to _arrest_ everybody. And this isn’t your party. This is a Reed Richards party, which means that my presence can only improve things. If you’re nice, I’ll consider spiking the punch on my way out. It might mitigate the fact that there’s two sad bottles of wine that he picked based on their names and fifty people on the guest list.”

“It’s still not a business event,” he sighed.

“Of course not. Which is totally why you’re poking around Richards’s lab with a micro-camera instead of finding your way back to the mixer. _Anyway_ ,” she grinned at him, “as you can see, I have nothing up my sleeves--”

“Would you get to the point?” he groaned.

“You are _such a killjoy_. Coulson is rubbing off on you, I swear.” Lucy scowled at him and plucked the quiver from thin air. She examined it closely, muttered a few things to herself, and then tapped the base of it. “Here you go.”

“Seriously? That’s it?” Clint asked suspiciously. He took the quiver and looked at it, his expression betraying his skepticism.

“O ye of little faith,” she grumbled. “Try it out. Just be careful--”

Clint tipped the quiver to the side, and a small avalanche of arrows knocked her off her feet and buried him up to his hips.

“--with it. Because this could happen.” Lucy floundered upright. “Happy?”

“Strangely, yes.” He held the quiver reverently, his eyes lighting up.

“Weirdo,” she said. “These aren’t the explosive ones, are they?”

“No. How do I keep, uh, this from happening?” Clint hefted the quiver carefully, his brows furrowing as he examined it.

“Just keep a lid on it when you’re not actively using it. If nothing’s coming out, it won’t keep trying to refill itself.” Lucy pushed her hair out of her face and looked around. She waved a hand, and the stray arrows vanished.

“And if I am using it?”

“Then whatever you take out will keep being replaced.” She straightened her clothes. “It’s magic, not rocket science.”

“Well, that’s reassuring.” Clint glanced around and slung the quiver over his shoulder. “Strange makes it sound like it’s, you know, really complicated and capable of destroying life as we know it.”

“That’s because Strange routinely meddles with forces with which men were not meant to reckon,” she said cheerily. “What did he want that tooth for, anyway?”

“Interdimensional portal, I think?”

“Well, that sounds responsible. Which way is the nursery? Are we on the right floor?”

“Why are you asking that?”

“I left something here a long time ago, and I really should shut it down, just, you know, _in case_. Part of my New Year’s resolutions. ‘Stop leaving magical shit I’m not using turned on and just lying around.’ It sets a bad example for all the people who see me as a role model.”

“I think anyone who sees you as a role model might have passed the point where it mattered a while back,” Clint said. “And if you honestly did leave something dangerous lying around in Sue Storm’s kid’s playroom? I really wouldn’t want to be you when she finds out.”

“Pfft. It’s not _dangerous_. Just maybe a little inconvenient. Unless their security were so awful that random supervillains could just bust in all willy-nilly and loot the joint.” She smiled placidly at him.

“You’re a terrible person. You know that, right?” he asked.

“I’ve heard less-than-credible rumors to that effect. Now, nursery? I mean, seriously, I expected them to have _some_ shit in common with Doom, but an inability to adequately label their absurdly-large facilities for visitors was not one of them. If nothing else, I’d think Richards would need directions to the less-frequented areas of the building. Like, you know, the nursery.”

“If you’ve been there before, shouldn’t you know where it is?” he demanded.

“First, I have a terrible sense of direction in office buildings. Just awful. And second, this was back before the forty-second floor vanished in that incident with the sentient betamax Johnny Storm snuck back from that weird antimatter universe, so I don’t know where it wound up after they rearranged everything.” She pursed her lips. “You know, if you wouldn’t want to be me if the Invisible Woman finds out I left an artefact lying around her kid’s rumpus room, would you want to be you when she finds out you didn’t help me disarm it?”

“Terrible person,” he repeated, rubbing his face.

“Eh. File an incident report and get it added to the laundry list of charges Coulson’s loading onto a forklift somewhere.” She shrugged. “Where are we heading?”

“Down the hall, take a left,” he said sullenly, falling in behind her. “What are we even looking for?”

“A big cardboard box with ‘duplicator’ written on the side.”

Clint stopped for a second, then rushed to catch up with her. “You didn’t.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny not having done an unnamed act.”

“You tried to turn Franklin into Multiple Man.”

“Way to assume the worst, dude.” She snorted and shook her head. “Kid was bored, kid was lonely, kid was a fan of _Calvin & Hobbes_.”

“I cannot believe you targeted their kid. Isn’t that against the villain code or something?” Clint snapped.

“Oh, I did _no such thing_. Saint Vishnu on a pogo stick, Barton.” Lucy glared at him. “I was here to swipe something from the lab, and I guess Richards was on babysitting detail that night.”

“I don’t think you can ‘babysit’ your own kids, Jones.”

“Well, normal human beings? No. Reed Richards? Jury’s still out. Anyway, the kid was just wandering around with jam smeared all over his face and no pants and I guess he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and I felt bad about just ditching him like that when he ran into me in the hall and asked for lunch.”

“You broke in to raid their lab, and you stayed to play pattycake with their kid,” Clint said flatly.

“Hey, now. I _like_ kids,” she protested. “Kids are awesome. The biggest thing I miss about my aunt’s cult is all the kids.”

“So you set him up with a doomsday device and ran off?”

“No, I cleaned him up, got him dressed, made him some grilled cheese and tomato soup, watched a few episodes of _Sesame Street_ with him, and then set him up with a doomsday device.”

“Wow.”

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s a really _fun_ doomsday device. And I’m pretty sure I remembered to cap it out at, like, enough duplicates to have a baseball game. And even if I didn’t, I think an overwhelming army of adorable children is probably not the worst world-ending mechanism ever devised.”

“That is...not reassuring.”

“Then help me find it so I can kill it. Jesus, Barton, it should not take this long for a thought to percolate through that brain of yours.”

“Second door on the right.” Clint shook his head. “What did you steal from Reed’s lab, anyway?”

“Actually, it was more like I borrowed it. I brought it back afterwards,” she said defensively. “I didn’t clean the slime off of it, no, but I did bring it back. Richards came up with this neat little self-powered wormhole generator. It was so compact that you could load it into a backpack and just take off with it.”

“And you took it for a test drive as a favor to him?” he asked.

“No, don’t be stupid. I _really_ don’t care for him. I mean, seriously, you can build a giant human rights violation in the middle of another dimension, but you can’t remember to feed your kid? Nobody’s got time for that kind of bullshit.” Lucy pried the door open and looked around the room. Clint shifted uncomfortably, the shelves and boxes of toys, books, games, and technological odds and ends feeling off limits. “You know how frogs are pretty much the devil?”

He stared at her for a second, blinking in surprise. “I don’t even know what I was expecting you to say, but that is not it.”

“Cuban tree frogs. They’re ugly, they go where they don’t belong, they short out the electrical grid on purpose, and they’re pretty much just the worst.” Lucy made her way to the closet and pried it open as well. “Bingo!”

“I’m going to assume all of that is true because I somehow think it doesn’t have much bearing on what comes next,” Clint sighed.

“Nothing happens next. I hoovered up every out-of-bounds asshole frog in the southeastern US and stuffed them into the wormhole.” She surveyed the object of their quest with a critical eye, then popped a box-cutter out of her sleeve.

“I thought you didn’t have anything up your sleeves?”

“Magicians _always_ have something up their sleeve. In my case, it’s a utility knife. That whole schtick is just what you say to let everybody know you’re going to be rocking some magic.” She carefully ran the blade along the folds, separated the taped edges, shook it flat, and scored out the writing. “Ta-da!”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” She propped the collapsed box against the back wall. “Let’s get out of here before we have to explain this to mama bear.”

“So, if you took the inarguably sane ecological step of cramming all the invasive frogs into a stolen wormhole, why do we still have invasive frogs?”

“Well, that’s the thing. The wormhole opened at the original port of entry sometime in the ‘20s. The frogs I got rid of turned into the original wave of migratory amphibians. Only now they’re on to me, so it’s turned into kind of an on-again, off-again battle with man for supremacy over the ecosystem.”

“They’re their own grandfathers.”

“Pretty much, yeah.” She shrugged. “What’re you going to do?”

“Not meddle with forces with which men weren’t meant to reckon?” he suggested.

“Technically, it was _Richards_ meddling with those forces. I rounded the frogs up with magic, yes, but shooting them straight back into their own history to reinvent their present was all capital-s Science. You know, it’s like every time I mess with the past, it just turns into a moebius strip.” She shook her head. “The thing with the tomato worms was stupidity with magic start to finish, though, and goddamn if I didn’t learn a lesson from _that_.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“Probably not.” Lucy grimaced. “Even if it is an organic alternative to pesticide, convincing time to run backwards on thousands of tiny targets is neither easy nor fun.”

“ _Terrible person_.”

“Blow me. Tomato worms have it coming,” she said firmly. She cracked her knuckles. “And now for my grand finale, I’m leaving before I get roped into doing anything else even mildly responsible for the next week. _Ciao_.”

“Wait--”

She vanished.

“Hey, Clint. Who were you talking to?” Hank asked, coming down the hallway. His face clouded over as he looked around. “Sue asked me to make sure you found your way back okay. Something about a localized occurrence of elliptic geometry on this level....”

“Yeah. Great. Fine. Nobody. Let’s go.” Clint turned him around and prodded him back the way he’d come, following close on his heels.

“Where’d you hide the quiver? I thought Reed made everybody check their weapons at the door,” Hank said, frowning.

“Nowhere, man. Can’t this wait until we’re back at the tower?”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Back at the tower, Hank.”

“Fine, fine.” He put up his hands. “I’m sorry I asked.”

*****

Sif blinked and looked around, her sword at ready. The Bifrost had deposited her in the middle of a small clearing surrounded by short, lush trees.

“Just so you know not to get too comfortable, I’m not talking to you, and if I weren’t right in the middle of something, I’d have been gone before your fancypants portal even opened,” Lucy shouted. “And also, I’m leaving as soon as I’m finished.”

Sif sheathed her blade and walked toward the sound of the woman’s voice. “I’m not leaving until we’ve spoken.”

“Did you not hear any of what I just said?” she demanded. 

Sif pushed her way through a hedge of scrub and grass, the sandy soil shifting under her feet. Sweat was already beading her brow and dampening her back. The air was hot and thick, and she was regretting dressing for what she’d seen of Midgard’s spring. On the other side of the hedge was a soft drift of snow-white sand and a wide bay. Lucy was hip-deep in the water, perhaps a hundred feet from the shore.

“I heard everything you said. We still need to speak,” Sif shouted back. She surveyed the water carefully.

“Don’t even bother trying to wade out here in that ridiculous pile of armor. It’s too deep to walk all the way, and I’m not getting yelled at because you drowned.” A dark shape cut through the water on the other side of her.

“What manner of beast is that?”

“It’s a baby whale. Now will you be quiet? I’m trying to work here.”

“Only if you promise to stay after you finish.”

“You’re holding a baby whale’s future hostage. You’re officially a monster. Just so you know.”

Sif glowered at her back. “I will have your promise.”

“This is just bad manners. Do I roll up into Asgard when you’re all in the middle of having a huge feast or hitting each other with swords or....” She trailed off. “Okay, I’m going to be honest for a second. I am not real sure what else you guys spend your time doing.”

“Swear it,” Sif demanded.

“ _Fine_. We can have a lively back-and-forth about why you people are all completely ridiculous for trying to pursue this. Once I am done with this hybrid abomination of a whale.”

“That’s an unkind thing to say.”

“Pfft. It doesn’t speak English.”

“Thor said that you had learned an enchantment which could let all creatures understand your speech, and that you could discern theirs.”

“Goddammit.” She paused. “Wait, no, it doesn’t work on animals. Ha! Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

“I don’t have a pipe,” Sif protested.

“It’s a saying,” Lucy sighed. “Now shut up, before this little bastard is stuck in a range where no other whale can talk to him for the rest of his natural life.”

After a few moments, a booming howl shook the earth. Sif covered her ears and dropped into a crouch. When the sound faded, she looked up to see the magician swimming back to shore.

“What was that noise?”

“The kid’s got pipes,” Lucy answered, her explanation not explaining anything. Sif glowered at her as she made her way up onto the beach.

“Will you please put some clothes on?” she asked.

“Huh? Did my top slip?” Lucy glanced down, confused, then glanced back up, still confused. “I’m wearing a bathing suit. What’s the problem? It’s not like I’ve got anything you haven’t seen before.”

Sif blushed. “You were never precisely in the habit of turning yourself into a woman.”

Lucy scowled and crossed her arms. “First, not Loki. Second, I mean due to _being_ a woman, jackass. It’s not like you’ve never seen a pair of tits before. And please tell me this isn’t what you came here to talk about. I know I’ve got a magnetic personality, but firing up an interdimensional transporter just to tell me to put my pants back on doesn’t really seem cost-effective.”

“You need to come home,” Sif told her.

“I _am_ home. Seriously. Right here. This planet.” She gestured wildly. “Home. I’d offer to draw you a picture, but I’m afraid there’s only so much I can accomplish with stick figures when aliens are being deliberately obtuse about things.”

Sif sighed. “What will it take to get you to return to Asgard with me, Loki?”

“There’s nothing you can offer me right now that would even vaguely tempt me,” Lucy grunted. She conjured a beach chair and flopped into it, then conjured an umbrella to shade her. “I’ve got a list of shit to work through before get into an inter-pantheon tag-team for the fate of the world. You guys can all wait your turn to harass me about your inability to accept death.”

“You’re still as poor a host as you ever were,” Sif grumbled, looking pointedly at the umbrella.

“I’m not the one who came to the tropics dressed for a Scandinavian Christmas party,” Lucy snorted. She relented, though, and summoned a chair and umbrella for Sif.

“You’ve met Odin.”

“I saw Odin for a few seconds around the back of Thor’s head,” Lucy corrected. “Then I found it expedient to develop business elsewhere.”

“He will return. Or, more likely, Frigga will come. You’ll find it harder to avoid them than to avoid Thor.”

“I doubt that a great deal, but, regardless, it still doesn’t change the simple fact that I’m not Loki.” She stretched, and Sif averted her eyes. She felt foolish even as she did it; she wouldn’t have looked away if it had been truly Loki. “They can hang around until the cows come home, it’s not going to make me their missing son.”

“I may be able to help with that,” Sif offered.

“Oh?” Lucy ran her fingers through her long, dark hair, squeezing excess water from it. “Do tell.”

“Would it be too much to ask you to change back into a man?” she said.

“Well, that’s an interesting request.” Lucy arched an eyebrow. “Usually _that_ sort of conversation starts out with ‘So, you’re a shapeshifter?’ in a creepy tone and then rattles along until I feel this strange but overwhelming compulsion to break somebody’s face for them. I’m so glad you’ve decided to skip straight to the end stage.”

Sif blushed. “That’s not why I was asking at all.”

“I turned into a man _once_ , and only because a girlfriend I was particularly fond of asked me to. It was weird and uncomfortable and tremendously awkward, and we could hardly look each other in the eye for two days afterwards. I have absolutely no desire to turn into a man again.” Lucy settled back into her chair. “So, no. We can have this conversation as is, or you can fuck back off to Asgard. I should think the option I prefer would be obvious.”

“I apologize,” she sighed. “I did not mean to cause offense.”

“Well, then.” Lucy paused. “I suppose I can accept your apology. For the time being. Provided no further asinine requests pertaining to how I look are forthcoming. Now, I believe you said something about helping.” She snapped her fingers, and a glass of iced tea appeared in Sif’s hands, startling her enough that she almost dropped it. She looked at the glass dubiously. A martini appeared in Lucy’s hand, and she lounged back and crossed her legs. “It’s tea, not poison. Drink it. You’ll like it. So, tell me about this _help_ you may be able to offer.”

“In addition to Thor, the Warriors Three and I were Loki’s closest companions,” Sif began.

“Okay.”

“We knew him best.”

“With you so far.”

“We’re not...entirely convinced. About you, that is.”

“So you’re on the fence about whether or not Thor is completely out of his fucking mind,” Lucy said, nodding. “And you’re offering...?”

“To keep an open mind and observe.”

“That’s not particularly helpful, by earth standards,” Lucy grunted. “Assuming that’s it, anyway.”

“You said you had tasks to accomplish?” Sif asked.

“That’s one way of putting it, yes.”

“I can assist you. In return, let me stay with you. I suspect the more time I spend in your presence, the better case I’ll be able to make to the Allfather that you’re not Loki.”

“Interesting.” Lucy steepled her fingers and rested them against her chin. “And completely out of the question.”

“I am one of the finest warriors in all of Asgard,” she retorted. “Why is me joining you completely out of the question?”

“I’m not on a quest to smite the demon lord of elf-town, Sif. You stamping around in five tons of plate and waving a sword is going to make most of what I need to do way more difficult, and it’s not going to help with the rest of it.” She picked her martini back up, her ring clinking against the glass’s stem, and drained it. “Hell, I couldn’t even fix the vocal range of a whale calf without you interrupting me, and that’s some basic tampering with nature, right there.”

“Why were you even doing that? It doesn’t seem to be particularly nefarious.”

“Much to my eternal regret, even I can’t be all nefarious, all the time,” she sighed. “His mother asked me to. It wouldn’t have been necessary if he’d been a girl. They’re telepathic. But if the boys want to talk, they have to sing. Not really fair, but them’s the breaks. In his case, being a hybrid meant not being able to do that in one or the other proper ranges. He was stuck in the middle, which put him out of both of the potential pods. So I talked to him for a while, then I fixed his voice. Anyway, I’m not letting you tag along with me.”

“Afraid seeing too much of you will change my mind?”

“And you’ll arrive at the sudden realization that I’m Loki? Nope. Not even a little.”

“Very well,” Sif sighed. “I you don’t _want_ my help, I should probably just go.”

“Are you trying to reverse-psychology me? What am I, five?”

She shrugged. “It sometimes worked on Loki.”

“Oh my fucking god, you people are dysfunctional.” Sif glared at her. “Seriously, what am I thinking, not signing right up to be part of the super-powered soap opera you’ve got going? Clearly, it’s the missed opportunity of a lifetime.”

“If you hold us in such poor regard, why did you save Thor?”

“Why do I do anything? I’m capricious and fickle.”

“You fought a dragon-king to a standstill to save him. You healed him. That speaks of rather more than simple caprice.”

“What sort of answer do you want, then? That I categorically deny that he’s my brother, but I’ve grown rather fond of him regardless? That my unresolved anger-management issues sometimes lead to extreme risk-taking and violent outbursts? That I feel like I’ve got something to prove now that my failure could literally see humanity as we know it wiped out? That I occasionally feel the need to push my luck to the breaking point, because I know it can’t hold forever and I can’t take the suspense? All of the above?” Lucy smiled mirthlessly. “Or I guess we could stick to the more comfortable territory of me being secretly Loki and being motivated by....I don’t even fucking know anymore, brotherly love? A sense of fraternal duty? Whatever part of him didn’t try to blow up a planet and blast Thor to kingdom come?”

“You’ve grown fond of him, then?”

Lucy heaved an exaggerated sigh. “I could be showing fangs, rattling a tail, and flaring a brightly-colored neck-frill, and you still wouldn’t take the hint, would you?”

“I don’t know what half of that means. But you’ve grown fond of him.”

“I’m only human, Sif. He’s excessively affectionate and fairly charismatic. It means nothing beyond that.”

“And if it does?” Sif pressed.

“Then I’ll worry about that later,” Lucy sighed. “I’ve got bigger fish to fry at the moment.”

“Let me help you, then.”

“You’re very persistent, I’ll give you that.”

“Since you don’t have the benefit of Loki’s experience with me, I’ll make this easier for you,” Sif said. “I _will_ have my way. It would save time and a few bruises if you relent now and permit me to accompany you on your errands.”

“You know what? Fine. You’re hired. Welcome aboard. The next stop on the tour is convincing the ATF not to get themselves shot up by and then shoot up in turn a particularly trigger-happy cult, because I _like_ California and would be terribly annoyed at having to wipe it off the map in retaliation, and I cannot think of a single way this could possibly go wrong.”

Sif crossed her arms and tilted her head. “What are you playing at?”

“Well, it suddenly occurred to me that it’s grossly unfair that SHIELD gets to abuse you people’s weird obsession with me being Loki and I don’t. So, let’s go haggle with the ATF over an assload of weapons violations,” Lucy said cheerily. “Unless you’ve changed your mind and would like to go home, in which case you should definitely do that instead.”

“Let’s go, then.”

“You have no idea what half the words I just said mean, do you?” she asked.

“I’m a quick study,” Sif assured her.

“Here’s hoping.”

“Will you at least be putting on some clothes?”

“Probably. I’ve found it makes agents a little nervous when you try to negotiate hostage situations in a bikini. They just don’t know how to react to it.” Lucy stretched. “Just so you know, though, if you get in my way, I won’t hesitate to teleport you to the middle of Tehran and let SHIELD sort out the diplomatic consequences.”


	31. Chapter 31

Lucy frowned and held up her bullhorn. “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time, Coulson?”

“A magician and an alien are joining forces with a death cult on US soil. This is actually in my job description,” Coulson answered over the PA system. “Answer your phone. I don’t want to have this conversation over a loudspeaker.”

“I don’t have my phone anymore. A whale ate it.” She paced along the top of the cinder block wall she was perched on. “I think. I dropped it in the ocean around a whale, and then I couldn’t find it afterwards, so I’m reasonably sure the whale ate it.”

“Then pick up the handset in the phone booth two hundred yards east of your current position.” She had to give him credit for the way he mostly avoided sighing into the microphone.

“The one you have like three dozen snipers covering? Do you seriously think I’m going to fall for that one?”

“That’s just a precaution, Jones. Unless you’re no longer bulletproof on alternate Tuesdays?” The static hiss and feedback made everyone wince.

“It’s every third Wednesday, and it’s the principle of the thing, Coulson. If you try to snipe me, I’m going to have to _summon the bats_. If I have to summon the bats, nobody’s going to be happy.”

A quickly muttered conversation was half picked up by the microphone. Lucy caught “Can she do that?”, “What’s she talking about?”, and “Let me handle this.” before she felt the need to hoist the megaphone again.

“Guys, I can hear you. Somebody’s leaning on the damn button.”

The feed cut off with a squawk.

“Will you get down from there?” Sif hissed from behind the cover the wall provided.

“I like it up here. I can see everything. And I really can’t be harmed by conventional weapons at this point. Mostly. Probably.”

“Jones, we can hear you,” Coulson informed her.

“I don’t care,” she retorted.

“Go answer the phone, Jones.”

“Fine.” She looked down at Sif. “Stay here. I’m guessing that armor won’t stop a sniper’s bullet, and I’ll be damned if I get stuck explaining what went wrong to the Asgardian hordes if anything happens to you.”

“I’m not staying behind while you put yourself in danger. I’m especially not staying behind with a pack of blue people fornicating in public while you put yourself in danger.”

“Hey, now. It’s a religious ceremony. Of sorts. They just got a little confused on some of the details.” Lucy cringed slightly. “The Feast of Saint Krishna is like Christmas for people who were too high to understand what the Hare Krishnas were trying to tell them and then never bothered looking it up afterwards.”

Sif looked at her blankly.

“Just stay here. And remember to use the flat side if you need to sword anybody who tries to throw blue paint on you. And stop looking at me like that. You _insisted_ on coming.”

She trotted off before Sif could say anything else. So far, things were not going terribly well. She’d forgotten that it was the Feast of Saint Krishna. Her aunt usually sent her at least a text wishing her well and inviting her back for the maypole part of it. Sif had not been terribly pleased to walk in on the third-day festivities, which was understandable. She hadn’t been terribly pleased to walk in on the third-day festivities, either. Of course, it could have been worse. The Festival of Hosea didn’t involve gallons of food-coloring, but it was just as weird and infinitely more embarrassing, especially since she was reasonably sure that Hosea’s marriage to Gomer had been an extended metaphor rather than a call for reenactment. She slipped into the phone booth and picked up the handset.

“Happy now, Coulson?”

“What are you doing, Jones?”

“Trying to keep my last living blood relative and a bunch of her poor benighted followers from getting massacred by the FBI. Who, by the way, have put the ATF’s nose seriously out of joint by hijacking their investigation under what are apparently very dodgy jurisdictional arguments, so SHIELD might want to prepare for some blowback over that.”

“It’s very kind of you to be concerned, given the blowback you should be worried about from hijacking one of Asgard’s best warriors on god knows what pretext.”

“If anyone’s getting hijacked here, it’s me.” Lucy leaned against one glass half-wall and kept a vague eye on the installation outside the compound. “She insisted on coming with me, ostensibly to help me prove I’m not Loki. I think Thor put her up to it. If I actually knew shit about Loki, this would be a golden opportunity to fix this bullshit. Hint, hint.”

“We don’t have anything on his brother that he didn’t give us, Jones, and if anything happens to her, there’s a good chance it’s going to end in a war.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s almost like there are negative consequences to telling a bunch of aliens that a supervillain is their long-lost spare prince. Who’d have thought? Oh, wait. I did. And told you about it.”

“Yes, you were right. I’m sorry.”

“Wait, what? Could you repeat that? I don’t think I heard you correctly.”

“Don’t push it, Jones.”

“In honor of me being declared right all along, do you think you can maybe call off the dogs? I get that the Followers of Hatshepsut, or whatever they’re calling themselves this week, are not exactly a cuddly good-times cult that feed errant hippies and runaway teens until everybody grows up a little and realizes that soap and haircuts can be a good thing, but you can’t go around firebombing compounds full of minors and more-or-less harmless crazies because of a few sawed-off shotguns.”

“We’d actually planned on using fentanyl, not napalm.”

“Wait, _fentanyl_? I mean, okay, it’s a step up from the cleansing power of jellied gasoline, but why don’t you run that one past Romanoff and see if you still think it’s a good idea?”

“What’s your counter-offer?”

“My counter-offer is you all fuck off and forget you were ever going to do this. I mean, I hate to draw lines in the sand, here, but I’m _not_ letting this happen. I’m not super-fond of really hurting people, but given how frequently you fire up your recording of that Guatemala incident, you can’t be unaware that I’m capable of it, given the right stakes. And these idiots are like the closest thing I have left to an actual family, so I’ve kind of been given the right stakes.”

“I have no knowledge of the recording to which you’re referring.”

“Of course you don’t. Anyway, if you guys steamroll this joint, it’s going to go south, and then it’s going to escalate.”

“This is simply experience talking?”

“Well, experience plus uh, I guess you’d call it foresight? Prophecy? Divination? I’ve got some powers that are on loan from somebody else that are starting to come in. It’s a little weird. But, you know, what I’m seeing as the future if you give the order on this and what I’d extrapolate as the future based on how shit’s gone down in the past aren’t that far apart.”

“Someone is loaning you more power.”

“Yeah. It’s a magician thing. Kind of. And also a god thing, but kind of an old-fashioned god thing.”

“Does this mean you might be available to take care of a deity-related incident in the arctic if we back off this?”

“Coulson, if I run into one more pantheon behaving badly, I’m going to rage-quit life and wish the prehistoric crustaceans the best of luck with their new world. I mean, I _like_ humanity. We’re pretty cool, we’re great conversationalists, and nothing’s ever boring when we’re around. But Jesus fucking Christ, are our gods down for pulling some shit.”

“I’ll take that as a no, then.”

“Damn right, it’s a no.” Lucy rubbed her forehead. A sharp crack split the relative quiet, and she blinked stupidly at the spiderweb fractures radiating from a neat puncture in the phone booth’s half-wall. She reached down, her hand shaking slightly, and flicked a pancaked bullet off her jacket. “Okay, so when I warned you not to fucking snipe me, _did I sound like I was fucking kidding_?”

“Nobody gave the order, Jones. That was a lone agent acting _without orders_ ,” Coulson said quickly and firmly, a slight edge of alarm creeping into his voice. “We can fix this.”

“Nope.” Lucy slammed the phone down and swept out of the phone booth. She flicked off the installation with one hand and raised her other hand, reaching out with her magic. “Come to me, my chiropteran swarms!”

The sky darkened after a few minutes, and she smiled at the high-pitched creaking noise of thousands of audible vocalizations. One of the bats landed on her shoulder, and she picked it up affectionately. Four sharp, glistening fangs in a highly-recognizable configuration confronted her when she held it up. Lucy sighed. _Of course_ , she thought, her stomach sinking. _Of course._

She jumped the wall and ran for the compound, waving her arms frantically. “Wrong bats! I summoned the wrong bats! Everybody put your clothes back on! Vampire bats are coming!”

*****

“Nobody’s dead,” Fury said, flipping through the report.

“No, sir,” Coulson replied carefully.

“In spite of having clocked in a truly impressive one hundred percent injury rate.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And depleting the entire rabies vaccine supply of California, Oregon, and Nevada.”

“That was my understanding, sir.”

“And possibly upsetting the local ecological balance by the introduction of a massive swarm of--do correct me if I read this part wrong--’bumblebee bats that used to be vampire bats’.”

“At least the bumblebee bat is no longer in danger of extinction?”

Fury looked up, eyebrow arched carefully. Coulson kept his gaze focused carefully on the empty space directly in front of him. Fury tossed the report down with a sigh.

“Did we get fucked on this, agent?”

“In my opinion, or as a demonstrable fact?” Coulson asked.

“Both.”

“As a demonstrable fact, a sniper in the FBI’s chain of command fired on a lone superhuman target without orders. She denies acting according to pre-arranged signal and insists it was an accident. In my opinion, we got fucked on this. Between the way the Bureau scooped this operation up from the ATF over their objections, the shaky ground they were on when they did it, and a sudden case of perfectly-targeted nerves from a sniper with an otherwise sterling record, it is my belief that the confrontation was deliberately precipitated.”

“I concur.” He snorted. “At ease, Phil. We’ve got people shaking this tree. In the meantime, you think you can smooth this over with your little science fair project?”

“She’s got kin in the upper echelon of the cult. She was lobbying to get the investigation dropped and the commune left alone. If we can guarantee that, I think I can.”

“I’ll have Hill take care of it. I do not want to give that wand-waving whackjob a reason to move back in with the Manson Family. Can you get the Asgardian away from her without further incident?”

“According to her, Sif’s there voluntarily. I didn’t see any move on her part to attempt escape, so I’m inclined to believe her. With Thor off-planet, it would seem she’s stuck on babysitting duty.”

“Thor’s assigned her a chaperone? Maybe he’s smarter than he seems, after all,” Fury mused.

“I’d caution against underestimating his intelligence, director. He’s foreign to the culture, yes, but he’s proven a very quick study, and he’s shown a preternaturally strong aptitude for effective improvisation.”

“Shame he didn’t pick a chaperone who could prevent the rain of blood-drinking rabies-carriers,” Fury grunted. “Go make contact, Phil. Put out a high alert if you can’t get a positive response.”

“Yes, sir.”

*****

“Well, this is embarrassing,” Lucy sighed. “Sorry about the hair.”

Sif glowered at her. “This is becoming rather a habit with you.”

The doctor’s assistants glared at them over the counter, and the rest of the waiting room’s occupants did their best to ignore them.

“If I had had any idea it would just come _off_ like that, I’d have let you get the bats out yourself. I _really_ didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“It shouldn’t have. The spell is powerful.”

“I didn’t notice a spell, honestly. Do you want me to try putting it back on?” she offered.

Sif gave her a measuring glance. “You didn’t mean to pull it off in the first place. You didn’t mean to summon that type of bat. You only managed half a skirt when you finally agreed to put clothes on. I don’t know that I trust you with this.”

“The skirt is supposed to look like that. And I already explained about the bats. They have a bad reputation, and they’re ugly, and they’re a giant reservoir for a particularly awful disease, and everyone’s afraid of them for good reason, and they just wanted somebody to _like_ them. In retrospect, yes, that was bound to happen. At the time, it was an unavoidable accident. I’m not omniscient.” She spread her hands. “But I’m not going to pressure you into trying to let me help. It’s not my problem if you want to go around completely bald, and all I can do is apologize and move on.”

“Fine. One attempt,” Sif said firmly. “If it doesn’t succeed, stop trying.”

“That’s a terrible philosophy. How do you people have a space empire with that sort of thinking?” Lucy scolded, snatching the pile of dark hair from Sif’s hands. “Now hold still.”

“We do not have a ‘space empire,’” Sif told her flatly. Lucy combed through the locks and found the roots. She carefully set the upper edge along Sif’s natural hairline and draped the rest back, gritting her teeth in the hopes that whatever magic she’d disturbed would reassert itself. The hair flowed into the skin as if it were natural, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Okay, is that right?” she asked, stepping back. Sif stretched the shoulder she’d gotten the rabies shot in, then ran her hands through her hair.

“It feels as it did before you removed it, yes,” she admitted. “What did you do?”

“Nothing! It just sort of, I don’t know, reattached _itself_. It was a bit weird, honestly.” Lucy stared at it. “Hey, do you mind if I take it off again and--”

“Yes, I mind!” Sif snapped, jerking away from her. She relaxed when Lucy held up her hands apologetically and backed away. She rubbed the injection site experimentally, frowning. “This is an odd method of healing, I must admit. How will being stabbed with a needle prevent an illness?”

Lucy sighed. “I don’t know that it will. You might not get sick no matter what. We’re not really down with the finer points of Asgardian biology out here in the hinterlands. But it’s not the needle, it’s the liquid that comes out of it. It basically, uh, shows your body what it needs to do to fight the disease. Like a practice match for a real fight.” She drummed her fingers absently on the counter. “I apologize again about the bats. I _really_ didn’t think I’d wind up with a huge flock of vampires flooding out of Mexico. I was shooting for, like, brown bats or free-tailed bats or maybe even some pipistrelles.”

“I suppose it’s not entirely unexpected. Loki’s cleverness backfired every so often as well.” She shrugged. “We were on a hunt once. He and Thor had made a bet about who could fell a beast first. Thor went tramping off into the forest alone, hoping to take a stag by stealth. Loki set a few snares to increase his chances before setting off as well. He sighted a hind first, put a spear in her flank, and pursued her right into one of his own traps.”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “And those sort of shenanigans are why I do all my hunting from blinds, with rifles, like a sensible person. Who won the bet?”

“Thor finished off the hind, cut Loki down, and declared himself the winner twice over. Loki protested that the hind was his, that he didn’t count as a felled beast, and appealed to us to mediate.” Lucy raised her eyebrows. “We might have been slightly more likely to decide in his favor if he hadn’t replaced our mead-barrels with water less than a fortnight before the hunt.”

“Well, then. Can’t argue with _that_ logic.” Lucy shook her head. “I don’t know that getting caught in your own snare really compares to retroactively making every terrible horror movie with the word ‘bats’ somewhere in the title a documentary, though. It’s humiliating, sure, but eventually everyone forgets about it and you get on with your life. I have the feeling this is going to make the papers.” She pursed her lips. “I’m going to have to pretend it was on purpose if I ever want to hear the end of it. I should call a press conference.”

One of the office assistants leaned out from behind the intake window. “Which one of you is Lucy Jones?”

Lucy waved. “That’d be me. Why?”

“Someone named Coulson on the phone for you. Says he’s with the HMO. Says he needs to talk to you.”

“Hooray. Show me the way,” Lucy groaned.

“Jones,” Coulson said when she picked up.

“Coulson. How did you find me?”

“It’s amazing how little difficulty one has locating someone in the company of dozens of underdressed smurfs and one six-foot Ren Faire escapee, all of whom need treatment for rabies exposure.”

“Well, when you put it that way, yes, it sounds kind of not-hard.” She paused. “Also, I don’t think they’d qualify as underdressed for smurfs. None of the dudes were rocking a shirt, and Smurfette was running around in what was basically a slip.”

“Moving on, I would like to apologize for letting the FBI shoot you.”

“Damn straight.”

“And I would like to assure you that further efforts to prosecute the organization your aunt has founded will not be made.”

“Thank you.” She sucked at her teeth. “I’m hearing a ‘but’ coming up.”

“I’m going to need to have a talk with Sif, in private. Just as a precaution, you understand.”

“Sure. As soon as I’m done here, I’m heading over to Chicago to break into a museum and rummage through their eurypterida collection. You can interrogate Sif while I’m doing that.”

“Must you?”

“Well, I wouldn’t if they’d actually put their shit out on display, but they haven’t, so yes, I must. If it’s any consolation, I promise to rummage very, very carefully, and if you try to stop me, I’ll afflict everybody with West Nile mosquitoes.”

“You realize that West Nile virus is not actually that dangerous to healthy adults, right?”

“Well, I do _now_.”

“And that it would be more of a consolation if I wasn’t covered in bat-bites from your most recent bout of very, very careful lawbreaking?”

“Be fair, Coulson. There was nothing careful about that at all. Really, they only wanted to be your friend. And, yes, also to feed on your life-force, but mostly to be your friend.”

“I’m sending you a new phone. Call me when you’re in Chicago.”

“I don’t want a new phone from you. You’re just going to bug it.”

“I have complete confidence in your countermeasures.”

“Oh, wait. Never mind! I can give it to Sif, and then you two can talk about superhero things instead of bothering me while I’m trying to figure out how to save the world from paleozoicization.” The office assistants stared at her. She covered the mouthpiece. “It’s cool, guys, I’ve kind of got a plan.”

“Jones, will you please be serious?” Phil demanded.

“I’m being completely serious. Don’t worry, I’ll get a new phone by tomorrow, and then you can call it and I can refuse to pick up. Deal?”

“Call me when you’re in Chicago,” he repeated. “And try to stick to cash transactions. I think the CDC just posted a bounty on you.”

“Will do,” she chirped. She hung up and beamed at the assistants. “Thanks for putting the call through, guys. I appreciate it.”

“Which HMO does he work for, again?”

“No idea,” she said, shrugging. “I just went with whatever was cheapest. I think it was like Hummana with two Ms or something.”

“I see.”

“Before you take that tone with me, I feel like I should warn you that my handbag is full of vampire bats whose greatest joys in life are getting tangled in people’s hair, cuddling right up to people’s necks, and probably-not-but-possibly having rabies.”

“Duly noted.” The assistant didn’t look up from her clipboard. “Please go back to your seat.”

Lucy’s face fell. “Nothing? That doesn’t get any sort of reaction?”

The assistant snorted. “Lady, you and your pals aren’t even the worst we’ve seen through here today. Go sit down.”

*****

“Father,” Thor greeted.

“Thor,” Odin returned heavily. “Fafnir’s bindings have been forged anew. He will not trouble us again for some time.”

Thor nodded hesitantly, and Odin sighed.

“When you were young, we hoped to raise you in a time of peace. We hoped that you would never know a return to the war which came so close to devastating all nine realms. We hoped that you would love and support each other without rancor or jealousy for as long as you lived.” He shook his head. “Now that you’re grown, I think it rather an indictment of those hopes that I can see my children battered and bruised and clinging to one another on the wreckage of a battlefield and count it something of a victory.”

“You no longer doubt me in this?”

“Having seen you together, I cannot.” Odin paced slowly in front of the fire. “Your mother wished to believe that Loki lived because she would not brook the loss of her son in such a way. I believed that your brother lived because I felt his spirit at work in the realms. It seems that the Fates have seen fit not to disappoint us in this, at least.”

“Loki does not know himself anymore,” Thor told him. “But he’s still my brother. He would not abandon me against an enemy like Fafnir.”

“At this point, I will take hope wherever it can be found.”

“Will you speak to mother?”

“Having seen this woman, I can see where the confusion lies,” Odin said slowly. “Having seen you together, I can see where your conviction comes from. I don’t see how I could keep this from your mother in good conscience. She needs to know that her youngest has been found, and that her oldest is not deluded.”

“I would not go as far as that,” Thor sighed. His voice dropped. “I don’t know if I can bring him home, father.”

“I have faith in you, Thor. Even in his madness, even when he was beyond your persuasion, Loki was never beyond your influence.” He smiled sadly. “We have time in this. Loki will come home.”

Thor felt a slight warmth kindle in his blood at his father’s confidence. He hoped he was right. He hoped Sif had made some headway where he’d failed to. Trying to make Loki do anything he didn’t want to had always been a long, slow game of strategy and bribery. Trying to make Lucy do something she didn’t want to had proven even more difficult. Perhaps with his father’s support, he could persuade Coulson to assist him more enthusiastically than he had. He risked a small smile.

“You must help me explain this to your mother, though,” Odin sighed. “We’ll never convince her separately.”


	32. Chapter 32

“Did you really have to bring Dr. Smashalot along for this, Coulson? I thought we were trying to be careful around the extremely old zooarchaeological specimens.” Lucy wound her hair into a tight bun and pulled on a pair of cotton gloves. Sif eyed them critically. “What? It keeps oil and sweat off the fossils.”

“Couldn’t you just use magic for that?” Bruce asked, crossing his arms and hanging back behind Phil. Lucy judged from his posture that Coulson had needed to strong-arm him into this.

“Sure. I could also just hunt down a lactating cow every time I want some cereal. Sometimes it’s easier to just put on the damn gloves or go to the fucking supermarket,” she snorted. “Also, congratulations on beating us here.”

“Intelligence agency,” Phil pointed out.

“If you guys want to go out for ice cream and turkey legs while I engage in a bit of criminal scholarship, feel free. It’s probably going to take a while.”

“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Sif warned her.

“But Coulson needs to make sure I didn’t kidnap you out of some weird, idiotic impulse to get run through a couple of times, and he’s not going to be happy until you’ve said it at least twice out of earshot of me.”

“I don’t answer to him.” Lucy started to object. “Or you.”

“Ball’s in your court, agent,” she sighed. “Have fun.”

Phil gave Sif a closer look and frowned. He waved Bruce toward Lucy and tried to pull Sif aside.

“What exactly are you hoping to find here?” Bruce asked as he watched her pull out a padded drawer.

“A weak spot, or a common defect, or some maladaptation. Chink in the armor. The right place to put an explosive round or two. You know, the usual.” She carefully poked through the contents before shutting it and opening another. “Thor show back up yet?”

“No. Did you really punch out a dragon?”

“No, I _defeated_ a dragon like a _fucking lady_.” She shrugged. “I don’t know that it necessarily counts, though. I mean, it was a space-dragon or some fucking thing. It’s hard to tell exactly how proud of yourself you should be when it comes to aliens. There’s always the potential for having just drop-kicked ET into the exosphere.”

“It’s been awhile since I’ve seen ET, but I don’t remember him killing anyone.”

“Point.” She glanced over to Phil and Sif. “Is he making progress, do you think?”

“He is not,” Sif answered firmly.

“You can seriously hear me from over there?”

“You are far louder than you think.”

“Oh. _Well, then._ ” She sidled up to Bruce and elbowed, who jumped a little. “Promise her you’ll keep an eye on me if they take a walk.”

“The last time I left your side, someone tried to kill you,” Sif grunted. “Unless that’s already slipped your mind.”

“It hasn’t, but let’s face it, they’re really bad at it. They’re not going to succeed if you leave where they would fail if you were here.”

“I would still be more at ease if you’d stop plotting to be rid of me.”

“I’m not plotting to be rid of you. I’m plotting to be rid of Coulson.” Phil sighed slightly, and she made a face at him.

“The two are not mutually exclusive,” Sif pointed out.

“Okay, yes, _granted_. Still. Go hover from a distance. Your hair is distracting me. I think it’s still mad at me. It’s like it’s watching me, waiting for the right moment to strike. And it will make Coulson happy, and then maybe he’ll refrain from having the FBI shoot at me again. In the meantime, Dr. Banner’s alter ego can make sure I don’t go anywhere. Right?”

He stared at her. “I suppose.”

“Don’t give me that look. The Hulk is why you’re here, yeah? You didn’t minor in Paleozoic arthropods while getting a degree in turning into a giant green rage monster? Is it now impolite to mention that fact?”

“Swear that you will not get into mischief while I’m gone,” Sif said finally, watching her carefully.

“I won’t intentionally get into mischief while you’re gone,” Lucy repeated absently. Sif’s eyes narrowed.

“That’s likely the best you’re going to get,” Phil said gently. She shook her head but followed him outside.

“I have to confess, I’m a little surprised that you gave in,” he confessed once they were alone. Her gaze swept over the narrow interior courtyard, looking for signs of danger. She didn’t relax until she was certain that they were alone and unthreatened.

“I grew up with Loki, Son of Coul. He could argue a rockslide to a standstill. Everyone said he had a tongue of silver, and could charm the stars from the sky, but his victories were not infrequently won through sheer obstinance. Thor is perhaps the more stubborn of the pair, but not by much. I am simply saving us both some time.”

He nodded. “Please, call me Phil. And what she said about your hair, do I even want to know what she meant by that?”

“It is an artifice. She accidentally pulled it off.”

“Trying to get a bat out of it?”

“Trying to get several bats out of it,” she confirmed.

“I apologize for her behavior, on behalf of the government of the United States.”

Sif scoffed. “She isn’t yours to apologize for, I don’t think.”

Phil weighed her statement. “Asgard is treating this as an internal matter?”

“For the time being.” Sif shook her head. “It’s...strange. Ordinarily if Loki were behaving like this, the Allfather would step in. Or Thor. Or even the queen. I thought maybe I could appeal to the blue priestess, but she was,” Sif hesitated a moment, “not helpful. Or wearing clothes.”

“No, I rather imagine she wasn’t. Jones doesn’t really answer to a higher authority, unfortunately.”

“May I ask you something, Phil?”

“Of course. I may not be able to answer, though.”

“Before he fell, Loki served Asgard. Not always faithfully, and not always by the safest or surest means, but there was no question that he was one of us.” She paused, chewing her lip. “Here, she does as she pleases, answers to no one, and yet she still seems, after a fashion, to be in service.”

“I’m not sure I see the question,” he said carefully.

“If she is, if my read on her is correct, I suppose my question is, to whom?” Sif asked pensively.

“There’s the obvious answer,” Phil suggested.

She shook her head. “She’s pompous, yes, and rather an ass at times. And overconfident. But she’s alone, isn’t she? She claims no territory, raises no army, sits on no throne. She’s not establishing herself as a power. You’ve noticed the difference between sellswords who fan their reputations to charge a higher fee and the ones who cultivate their names to gain the allegiance of their fellows?”

“After a fashion,” he said archly, nodding. It was an interesting question, that. He turned it over in his mind as she went on.

“She does not appear to be collecting allies, or putting anyone in her debt against the future, or consolidating her gains. She takes, and then she lets go. She does favors, and pays no attention to the gratitude she’s given. There’s a deeper purpose here. I can’t begin to guess at it, though. Can you?”

“I think, and this is only guesswork based on things she’s said in the past and conversations with another magician, that there’s a certain, uh, _vested interest_ in seeing the sun continue to come up. It’s sort of like why we fight HYDRA, even though nobody explicitly said it had to be our problem. They’re everybody’s problem, and we’re some of the only ones who can. The things she does that aren’t for personal gain or personal amusement tend to be things that need a magician, and she’s stuck living here with the consequences of them not getting done just like everybody else.”

“An interesting conclusion,” Sif muttered.

“It’s not something we’ve discussed at length,” he said. “I suppose you could try asking her directly.”

“If there is anything that Loki is, no matter what the form or what the circumstance, it’s a liar. I could not trust the answer, if she deigned to give me one. Given the difficulty I had persuading her to accept my company to begin with, it seems unwise to broach the subject.”

“Well, best of luck if you do. And please, let me know if she actually tells you anything.” Phil stopped abruptly, his left hand coming up in warning and his right hand going to his holstered gun. Sif’s sword came out of its sheath silently. Human shapes moved through the shadows in the rear of the museum’s courtyard. He counted, then gestured for her to follow him.

*****

“You know what I really want to do right now?”

“Sneak out the back just to put everybody’s nose out of joint?” Bruce asked, pushing his glasses up.

“Not as such, no. Find the guy that figured out you could get silica fossils out of limestone with hydrochloric acid and just give him, like, the biggest fucking high five.”

“Not sure I follow.”

She shrugged. “It’s clever. I mean, it’s stupidly simple once you see it, but somebody had to see it first. You know, go from picking fiddly little bits of dead, fossilized bug out of rock with a dental tool to just chucking the lot of it into a beaker and washing the shell out afterward. And then, boom. Whole new world opens up, and it turns out the bugs have feelers coming off their feelers and make spiny lobsters look understated. It’s dash cunning, especially for the ‘50s, and I’m something of a fan of cunning things.”

“Tony’s pretty cunning,” he pointed out blandly.

“Tony’s also been involved in several of the incidents where I’ve gotten repulsor-blasted through a parking garage,” she countered. “I’m rather less a fan of being used as a wrecking ball.”

“Only several of them?”

“People who build repulsors tend not to like me, for some reason.” She pulled down another specimen. “Their loss, really. I’m fantastic company, regardless of whether or not you have repulsor technology.”

“I think there might be some dissent about that.”

“Only in Canada. Hand me that magnifying glass over there?” She examined a tail spike the size of her thumb. “Fucking hell, these little monsters suck. Look at this.”

“Can we not do this?” he asked, his expression turning pinched.

“Not do what? Look at something completely rad?” She cocked her head.

He waved his hands at the room, frustrated. “ _This_. This thing where you act like you’re not actually a bad person and wouldn’t just as soon set the whole city on fire on your way out.”

“Did you have money riding on the dragon or something, Banner?” He rubbed his temples, and she rolled her eyes. “Fine. You’d prefer not to make the best of it, just go find a comfortable chair and park it until Coulson gets back. I’ll do my best not to annoy you in the meantime.”

“You don’t _annoy_ me. You’re just...” He trailed off and shook his head. “You’re like the other guy, only worse. You’re a force of destruction, and nobody’s willing to acknowledge it.”

“Wow.” Lucy drummed her fingers on the counter for a minute, chewing her lip. “Okay. Here’s the thing. I’m nothing like the Hulk. _Nothing_. That dude’s got like, two settings. There’s no talking him out of it or badgering him out of anything he’s decided he’s gonna do. The only thing you can do with him is crank him up from bunker-buster to nuclear warhead by pissing him off even more. And you? Are not really that in control of him. There’s no way to be. You’re getting a lot better about whether or not he comes out, but once he’s out, you’re pretty much done.

“So, yes, okay, I’m a force of destruction. Yes, okay, I have done some really rather extreme shit in my time. You want to be mad at me about it, fine, go for it. But--and I’m not a sociologist here, so take it with a grain of salt--I’d lay money on the reason most people go out of their way not to keep bringing it up when I’m _not_ setting things on fire or kicking dragons in the shins is that I have a pretty variable range of destructiveness. And I _am_ in control of it, pretty much. If I feel like I need to go do something before I really _do something_ , that’s an option. I can go get it out of my system a little bit without turning everybody in Perth into wallabies. So everybody else would prefer if I spent more time at the ‘too many bar fights’ setting and less time at ‘WMD.’ Which generally means you do less valorizing the WMD version and--”

Coulson burst back into the room, Sif at his heels with her sword drawn. “We need to go. Now.”

“Nice talking with you, Banner. Bye, Coulson,” Lucy waved. “Nice seeing you.”

“All of us,” he clarified flatly. He caught Banner’s questioning look. “Tactical team. Kitted out for a retrieval mission. Probably Ross’s men.”

“Wait, what? How is that guy not in Leavenworth?” Lucy demanded. “I rob one bank, and you guys are on me for life--”

“You’ve robbed over a hundred banks, Jones,” Coulson said.

“I rob over a hundred banks, and you guys are on me for life. That guy creates two self-directing super-weapons, one of which is objectively _evil on a bun_ , blows up a borough of a major US city using the military, goes all Kent State on a campus with no evident hippies, and it’s just like fuck it, let’s give him his command back? What is _wrong_ with you people?”

“Can you have this discussion somewhere else, before you’re having it over the Hulk roaring loud enough to break every window on the block?” Bruce asked tightly.

“You guys head out, I’m busy. And I can be invisible. So it’s not really my problem. Oh! Take Sif with you,” she said, her eyes glittering. “That way she can be not really my problem, too.”

A small explosion rattled the walls. Bruce jumped and gave Phil a sharp look. Sif glared at Lucy, who gave no sign of being willing to move. She flashed a beatific smile back at the warrior, cut short as a specimen rolled off the topmost shelf and fell.

“ _Motherfucker_!” Lucy yelped, staring at the slender spine neatly skewering her forearm. “That is just....Seriously, what the fuck. How does this keep fucking happening. Why do I always get stabbed when I’m around Asgardians. How is this even physically a thing.” Blood flowed steadily from the wound, and she pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and tried to staunch it. “This is the fucking worst.”

“Jones, you can rail at physics and bad luck later. Right now we have a team coming through the only significant barrier between us and them. We need to go,” Coulson said firmly.

Lucy frowned, tying the cloth tightly around her arm, and then hissed between clenched teeth. “This really fucking hurts. Also, ta- _da_!”

She tossed a handful of carefully-tooled metal cylinders onto the table. Coulson stared at them for a second.

“Firing pins?” he asked. Sif didn’t look impressed, and Bruce looked confused.

“Yup.” She grimaced and flexed her fingers slightly. “Shit.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that we’ve got two dozen highly-trained operatives bearing down on our position, and you’ve already injured yourself,” he pointed out.

“We need to go,” Sif snapped. “I will see to that wound once we’re in a safer place.”

“I could add a pile of pins off their flashbangs to the pile and thin out the herd a little,” she offered. “Also, I think this one’s on gravity and the malice of dead gods, not me.”

Phil hesitated for a moment, looking from Lucy to Bruce, then nodded. “Do it. Neither of you are looking so good right now.”

A metallic clatter sounded as Lucy threw a handful of loops and pins down on the table. A few seconds later, booms and startled screaming could be heard from outside.

“Follow me. Now. Sif, bring up the rear.”

They filed out as quietly as they could, Sif’s free hand firm between Lucy’s shoulder blades and her blade at ready. They weren’t noticed over the chaos of the grenades.

*****

“Shouldn’t you two be heading back to the warm embrace of SHIELD?” Lucy asked, examining the spine in her arm.

Coulson didn’t look up from his position by the window. “Why would we be doing that?”

“Because that team was clearly after Banner, whose continued well-being probably depends on not getting stuffed back down a secretly military rabbithole?”

“There will be reinforcements arriving in the morning. We just need to stay out of custody until then,” Phil sighed. “Unless you’re feeling up to helping with transport.”

“Nope.” She grimaced as Sif returned with the tools she’d asked for.

“You took a bullet without it phasing you less than a week ago,” Bruce grumbled, sorting through the first aid kit he’d scrounged together. Lucy wasn’t sure from where; the cheap motel room they’d holed up in certainly hadn’t come with one. “How do you manage to go from _that_ to _this_?”

She waved her hand.

“Magic!” she said sourly.

“Uh-huh.” He didn’t look convinced.

“Are you sure this is a good idea? I would think to just pull it back out,” Sif said, examining the spine.

“Yeah, I know. But the edges have these tiny little barbs along them, and going against the grain is going to snap them off and leave me with an even uglier wound, and I’d really prefer to avoid that if possible,” Lucy said with false cheer.

“Can’t you just magic it out?” Bruce asked.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever had the misfortune to be stabbed, Banner, but it really does kind of a number of your ability to concentrate after a while,” she hissed. She glared at Sif as the Asgardian positioned the boltcutter at the upper edge of the protruding spike.

“This is a most convenient tool,” she murmured. “It would have been most appreciated the last time Volstagg was struck by an enemy’s arrow.”

“Yeah, they’re tits. Count of three?”

Sif snapped it off cleanly. “Or we could do it at once.”

Lucy let out the breath she’d been holding. “Fuck.” She panted for a few seconds. “Pliers?”

“It would be easier if I did that as well,” Sif pointed out.

“It would be easier if I just went to an emergency room, but apparently that might result in a firefight,” Lucy grumbled. She relented after a moment, letting Sif clean the pointed tip and get a grip on it with the pliers. “Go ahead.”

Sif pulled down, extracting the spine without causing too much further damage.

“Holy mother of Princess Diana,” Lucy breathed, resting her forehead on her uninjured arm. Sif squeezed her forearm between two compresses. “Shit. Can you just _not do anything_ for a second? I need to get my bearings again.”

Bruce wiped the fossil clean and examined it more closely.

“We still in the clear, Phil?” he asked.

“So far. You going to make it, Jones?”

“Fuck you, Coulson. It’s going to take more than a spear of scorpion vengeance and a team effort to take me out,” she groaned.

“Seriously, though. You got shot, and this is what lays you out?” Bruce asked skeptically.

“Banner, it’s _magic_ ,” she groaned, not lifting her head. “You have to be paying attention, and you have to know what you’re doing. So yes, at the time I was involved in a fucking FBI deathcult standoff with a bunch of snipers and Coulson all taking aim at me, I was being careful of bullets. See also, earlier tonight, museum full of bad guys with guns. If I’d been worried about death from above in the form of a pointy fucking rock, I’d have cut to the chase and _moved_. And, you know, the thing was guided by dark magic, so it might have cut through my defenses anyway.”

“Dark magic,” Bruce repeated.

“Stop trying to get yourself killed,” Sif admonished.

“You’re not my mom, Sif.” She straightened. “Okay. I can do this.” She moved her hand over the wound, knitting flesh back together. “Holy fuck, that feels weird. Why is it that every time I get stabbed with something weird and magic, you’re around?”

“I am not,” Sif protested.

“She’s right, Jones,” Phil chimed in. “You get stabbed by weird things all the time.”

“I do not.”

“Selective perception, I think you called it when you were explaining things to Captain America,” he said blandly.

“It isn’t.”

“We could do a study,” Phil offered. “We have scientists standing by, even.” Bruce shot him a dark look.

“It would never get past the internal review board,” Lucy pointed out triumphantly. “Shit, never mind, SHIELD has the ethics of a rogue Monsanto division.”

She stretched cautiously, then tested her arm.

“Well?” Sif prompted.

“Tender and a bit stiff, but whole enough,” she grunted. “How you doing over there, Banner?”

“I’m not huge and green and ripping the walls out,” he retorted.

“I’ll take that as an ‘awesome,’ then. Anybody up for pizza? If I don’t get something to eat soon, I’m going to keel over and sleep for a week, which might be kind of a problem if we have unexpected guests.”

“Can you please take this seriously?” Bruce asked quietly.

“Okay.” She scowled at him. “If I don’t get something to eat soon, I am going to keel over and sleep for a week. Because I just had something punch through my arm, and then had it pulled out the other side of my arm. And it still hurts, and I am fucking tired, and I am kind of shocky, and I am kind of fucking stuck here, because I can get myself out, but it would mean leaving you three assholes behind, and I’m reasonably sure I’d feel a little bit shitty about it if that resulted in your doom. So do you want to keep being a prick about it, or do you want to pick a fucking topping and bring me the fucking phone?”

He flushed and handed her the phone.

“ _Thank_ you,” she grunted. “Coulson?”

“Whatever passes for a veggie-lover. Bruce will have the same. And don’t bother looking at me like that, doctor. If you Hulk out over low blood-sugar we’re all going to be terribly embarrassed.”

Bruce muttered something apologetic. Lucy rifled through her pockets.

“Good thing we’re in a bad enough part of town the poor bastard stuck on delivery duty won’t be too startled by blood on the money,” she said. “You want to read me the number off that billboard on the other side of the parking lot, Coulson?”


	33. Chapter 33

Lucy tossed a pizza crust down onto her plate and sat back. “So, Banner, I think I might kind of owe you an apology. Snarling at a dude who’s trying to keep it together so he doesn’t go on a smashing rampage in the middle of a populated area is probably not the least dickheaded thing I’ve ever done.”

Bruce coughed and looked down. “Apology accepted. You at least had the excuse of being injured.”

“Meh. Not the worst thing that’s ever happened,” she said with a shrug. Her arm still felt strange, like something was swimming under the skin. “Not to mention it was a little offset by the novelty of being involved in a cock-up that had nothing whatsoever to do with me. That doesn’t happen very often.” She pulled out her cigarettes. “Anybody mind?”

“Yes,” Phil said firmly.

“Okay, then.” She put them away with an amount of ill-grace that made Sif shake her head and sigh. There was a long-suffering quality to it that made her feel on guard. “Do I even want to know?”

“It would probably only irritate you,” Sif told her. Lucy snorted, and Sif shrugged, her eyes flickering over the familiar-but-strange figure across the table. Her lips were too red, her cheeks too pale, her kohl-rimmed eyes too bright, her hair too mussed. Her form with too thin even for her slender frame, and her blood was too hot under her skin. When irritation and anger animated her features, she looked feral. She was a creature of ruin, and it was stamped on every inch of her figure.

“Probably?” she asked archly.

“Almost assuredly,” Sif confirmed.

“Well, then.” Lucy rolled her eyes. _You don’t know me, lady._ “Tell your reinforcements to hurry up, Coulson. I’m going to have cabin fever by two o’clock at this rate.”

“Can I ask you something?” Bruce murmured.

“Shoot,” Lucy sighed.

“I’d think that something like pulling the firing pins out of guns you can’t see would be a lot more delicate work than transporting people you can to a new location.”

“Technically, yes, it’s a fiddlier kind of thing. But I mean, you fuck that up? No big deal. The gun’s not going to work, but that was the whole point of the exercise. It might blow up in somebody’s face instead of just not firing, but the hell with it, they’re douchebags anyway. You fuck something up with an actual organic thing? Bigger deal. Like, inside-out and on fire bigger deal. It’s a null risk versus a terrible risk.” She toyed absently with her lighter. It was difficult to describe the delicate interplay of forces that came with moving live creatures around a globe that was in motion at a fantastic speed. “You want to put it in science terms, it’s like an extremely touchy reaction that screwing up will turn into useless sludge versus a touchy reaction that screwing up will turn into Chernobyl.”

“Chernobyl?” Sif asked, her brows furrowing.

“Nuclear accident,” Lucy explained.

“Nuclear?”

“Stop giving classified information to the Russians, Jones,” Phil said mildly.

“They’ve got wormholes as a functional means of transport, Coulson. I imagine in this situation the bomb is kind of like ‘Oh, you’ve graduated from hitting each other with rocks to tying rocks to sticks and hitting each other with those! _Well done!_ ’ Not really that big an improvement, you dig?”

“Humor me.”

“Fine,” she grumbled. Sif raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms. “Basically we figured out how to tie rocks to sticks and then promptly smacked ourselves in the faces with it. Scientifically speaking.”

“Thor mentioned that your people have rather a penchant for doing that sort of thing,” Sif answered coolly.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Bruce sighed.

“I’m sure someday we’ll figure out how to get your particular rock off the stick in question,” Lucy assured him. He gave her a withering look.

“Pipe down, kids, we have company,” Phil warned. “A lot of company.”

“What’s the plan, Phil?” Bruce asked tightly.

“Can you put a hole in this wall, Jones?”

She looked at it. “What, _around_ the load-bearing--”

“Yes or no, Jones?”

“Not without bringing part of the building down, no. We’re on the third floor, remember? Out of like ten?” She considered the weight and redistribution required for it to not collapse before an evacuation could be managed.

“Since when is magic this complicated?” Bruce grunted, shoving the table against the door.

“Well, it kind of deflates the grandeur of it if I stop and explain everything every fucking time, doesn’t it? I’d sound like some scrub-league mad scientist from the ‘30s,” Lucy shot back. 

“You do sound like a scrub-league mad scientist from the ‘30s,” Bruce told her.

“Oh, I do not. At worst, I sound like....” She stopped. “Wait, never mind. Just let me fuck with gravity for a second.”

“Jones, do not alter local gravity,” Phil said firmly.

“Not the boss of me, Coulson.” She grinned, concentrated for a moment, and then snapped her fingers. “Okay, _now_ I can put a hole in the wall without fucking up the architecture.”

The wall crumbled to dust, giving them access to a utility closet. She disintegrated the wall beyond that, and they had a clear shot to the stairwell.

“Great. Thank you, Jones. That is very helpful,” Coulson said.

“Why are you saying it like that?” Lucy demanded, glaring at him.

“Like what?” he asked blandly, double-checking his sidearm. Sif poked her head into the utility closet.

“Like you really don’t want to. Like it’s actually physically painful for you to say something nice about my work,” she explained, nettled.

Sif took one step into the closet and hissed a curse as she began to float. Phil looked up at her and sighed. Lucy pushed her hair back and rubbed her arm, trying to dispel the pins and needles sensation. She’d forgotten to leave a hole in the gravity well.

“Because I was waiting for that to happen. Are you all right, Sif?”

“I’ve been better.” She tilted to the side. “This is a most unexpected thing.”

“Specifically that?” Lucy asked.

“No, just something _like_ that.”

“Screw you, Coulson. I think I’m doing pretty good for somebody who just got stabbed a few hours ago.”

“You’d have done this even if that hadn’t happened.”

“Only probably,” Lucy snapped. “I’m going to give you a push, Sif. The effect should wear off once you’re on the stairs. Just try to stay upright so you land on your feet.”

“Jones--”

Lucy leaned in and gave Sif a gentle shove, sending her drifting further across the closet. Lucy lost her balance and began floating as well. She considered the alterations necessary to correct the effect, felt her power surge and eddy, and gave up.

“Oh, goddammit.”

“If you’d stopped for a minute, I could have warned you.”

“This is kind of sad, Jones,” Bruce commented, pushing his hair out of his eyes.

“Shut it, Banner.” She frowned. “Okay, I’ve got it. Come on, people, I’m only doing this once.” She held out her hands. “It’s this or the front door, guys.”

Phil shook his head, but gave in. Bruce grimaced but followed Phil.

“This is extremely undignified,” Bruce said, taking her hand.

“You routinely get stuck running around in public in nothing but clownishly huge boxers thanks to your alter ego,” Lucy pointed out, pulling them into the closet.

“And consequently am something of an expert on undignified, yes.”

“Well, touche.” A short burst of wind picked up, sending them drifting through the space and out into the stairwell. She crashed into Sif and tripped when gravity kicked back in, landing on the bare concrete with the warrior on top of her.

“Holy shit, are you made of fucking _lead_?” she groaned.

“Asgardians are denser than humans,” Phil remarked, straightening his tie.

“You knew this. You knew this and then this happened.”

“Rabies shots hurt, Jones.”

“Dick. And I said I was sorry about that.”

“You didn’t, actually.”

“I totally did.”

“You did not.”

“Well, I _meant_ to.”

“That’s not the same thing as doing it,” Phil pointed out.

“So you let me drop a ton of alien on myself. Real nice.” He shrugged.

Sif got to her feet and pulled Lucy up after her with an exasperated snort. “You are not the most comfortable thing to land on, either. Your ribs are like whetstones. When we get back to Asgard, I will see to it that you are properly fed.”

Phil froze for the space of a breath.

“You don’t like my ribs, stop landing on them. _And_ I’m not going to Asgard, _and_ you just watched me eat an entire pizza all by myself,” Lucy said evenly. “My caloric intake is not the problem. Now, we should probably keep moving before the jerks chasing Banner catch on to the fact that we’re not in the room anymore.”

She trotted down the stairs, leaving them to follow or not as they saw fit. They were halfway down the last flight when an explosion rattled the fire door in front of them and sent tremors through the building.

“Can you put up a shield if you need to, Jones?”

“Maybe. Don’t quote me on that. I mean, you know, probably, but let’s try not to rely on that if we can avoid it?” Lucy contemplated the door for a moment. Power pooled in her fingertips, and her blood sparked in her veins. If she had to do anything, it wasn’t going to be subtle. “Man, this sucks.”

“Your plan to double-cross us and laugh maniacally hit a snag?” Bruce asked tightly, his eyes flashing green. Phil laid a comforting hand on his arm.

“I...what?” She stared at him for a moment. “ _Why_ would I double-cross you? In my experience, you guys are generally self-sabotaging enough that I don’t need more than the schadenfreude of reading a few pertinent headlines to get by. Like, oh no, I’m mad at the Avengers! I guess I’ll have to wait a few days for them to blow up half their tower or flip out at a Senate subcommittee or punch each other out in public over who keeps using all the hot water!”

“You’re self-sabotaging, too, but that’s not a substitute for jail.”

“I am not,” Lucy protested, feeling almost giddy. _That’s not good,_ she thought. _Maintain, just maintain. Keep talking. Don’t freak Banner out._ “The closest I’ve come to self-sabotage in _years_ is that Babel thing screwing up my Swedish Chef impersonation.”

“You _started a fight_ with _Canada_.”

She crossed her arms and took a deep breath. “I don’t know what you’re trying to say here, Banner.”

“Will you two stop bickering and focus?” Phil sighed. Another explosion rattled the door.

“Was that a repulsor blast?” she asked.

“That was a repulsor blast.”

“Does that mean the cavalry is here, and I can ditch you guys?”

“Possibly, but I’d really prefer it if you didn’t,” Phil sighed. “If the Hulk puts in an appearance, he does seem to like you for some reason.”

“Poor judgment? Subliminal desire for plausible deniability? My sparkling personality and quirky sense of humor?” She rubbed her eyes. Something was coalescing above them. She wondered if this was what a lightning rod felt like during a storm.

“You going to be all right there, Jones?” Phil asked.

Lucy felt something give, and energy shivered through her bones. She felt better immediately. “Um, that depends. How does everyone feel about hurricanes?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the unscheduled lack of updates, folks. I've been out of commission thanks to a revoltingly tenacious bout of flu. Regular updates resume this week.


	34. Chapter 34

“And this is why we should never have let Phil go gallivanting off for a tete-a-tete with a _known supervillain_ with only Bruce for back-up,” Clint muttered in his comm. He crouched carefully behind a pigeon coop, bow half-drawn.

“Wait, he went to a sit-down with Jones after shooting at her, and you were worried about _Ross_ showing up? What are you, psychic?” Tony demanded.

“Get off the line, Tony,” Natasha growled.

“No, it’s just that bad things happen around Jones. She’s a shit-magnet. Something was bound to go wrong.”

“Stop encouraging him, Barton.”

“We’ve got movement, guys. Want me to light them up?” Jan asked.

“Jan, please do not open fire on Ross’s goon squad in the middle of an area full of civilians,” Steve sighed.

“Oh, right.” Jan coughed. “What happens if it looks like they’re going to beat us to that particular punch?”

“Holy...they are aware this area hasn’t been evacuated, right?” Tony asked. “That is a truly irresponsible amount of artillery.”

“I don’t think they care, Tony. Okay, people, we need to shut this down, and we need to shut it down before we have a running battle between the Hulk and Ross’s mercenaries,” Steve said. “Jan, Clint--distract them. Tony, disable those weapons. Natasha, with me.”

*****

“Jones, did you just summon a hurricane over an occupied urban area whose residents are unlikely to have windstorm insurance?” Phil asked.

“What is a hurricane?” Sif demanded, her eyes going from Lucy to Phil to Bruce.

“A gale,” Phil told her.

“It wasn’t on purpose?” Lucy offered.

“That is not especially reassuring,” Sif pointed out. She sighed. “At least we are not at sea.”

“Yeah, I can see where that would be the case. Shit.” Lucy rubbed her face. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Bruce flushed green and grimaced in pain.

“ _Shit_.” She looked around. “Okay. We need to get out of here before Banner loses it completely. Stay behind me. We’ll stick to cover and head for Stark and whoever he brought with him on this playdate. If the shield fails, run for cover. Mind the flying debris.”

“Go!” Bruce hissed, doubling over. Lucy put her shoulder against the door and shoved, only to have it fly open, almost torn from its hinges by the gusting wind.

“Come on!”

Lucy shielded her face with her arm as they began to be pelted by fat drops of rain moving almost horizontally at great speeds. She could feel the coiling storm above them. There was more coming. A red-and-gold blur flew past them, halfway out of control, and a grenade bounced off an unseen barrier a few feet in front of her.

“Hey, assholes, there are people trying to sleep around here,” she shouted, flicking it back at them. The gray, black, and olive didn’t stand out against the soot-grimed buildings in quite the same way the Avengers did, but the muzzle flash from their weapons provided a target in the dimly-lit night.

“Bear right,” Phil said, raising his voice to be heard over the rising wind. “Head for Captain America.”

“You might want to get on the radio and tell them to batten down the hatches,” Lucy told him. “It’s going to get worse before it breaks.”

“I’m not on the right frequency. This was supposed to be strictly a SHIELD mission.”

“That is a terrible lack of foresight, Phil.”

“Tell me about it.”

The Hulk roared behind them, and Sif crowded against her back, sword drawn. Lucy squinted against the wind and grabbed her wrist. “For fuck’s sake, Sif, _don’t_.”

“We should make haste,” Sif grunted.

A hail of bullets ricocheted off the forcefield, and Lucy winced as the Hulk straightened and stretched the field around him like a bubble. She could feel the threads of the storm’s winds sliding through her fingers, too fast to see properly, pulsing like a live thing. Above the clouds, Huītzilopōchtli was fighting Coyolxāuhqui and their brothers. The world was in motion below them. Banner’s anger boiled inside the Hulk’s skin. An unexpected eddy set Stark banking off a building. She could see the ghost of a lightning strike that wouldn’t come for several minutes. _Divination and night winds_ , she thought. _Fucking Tezcatlipōca and his fucking power. At least I’m not turning into a leopard yet._

“We’re completely fucked here, Coulson. Just so you know.” A flying piece of plywood struck the shield and sent them all sliding sideways a few inches.

“I have faith in you, Jones,” he said, his tone dancing on the edge of sarcasm.

“I have to cut Banner lose if we want to make it to cover. He’s fighting with me right now, and I don’t know if Asgardians are bulletproof, but I’m pretty positive agents aren’t.”

Phil’s gaze rested on the growling giant for a brief moment. “If they had anything that could affect him in this state, they’d have used it already. Stop antagonizing him.”

Lucy gritted her teeth and reworked the surface area of the forcefield to exclude the Hulk without collapsing on them. She could feel the wind shear fighting to distort the field further as it warped. The rain came down harder, stinging where it struck bare skin.

“Utterly and completely fucking fucked,” Lucy hissed. She blinked against the spray. “Was that the Wasp?”

“Keep moving,” Phil said firmly, his lips twitching in concern as he followed her gaze. 

“That’s a nice thought, but when I said stay behind me, I fucking meant it,” Lucy growled at Sif as the warrior tried to get on her windward side. The Hulk pounded past them directly at the retrieval squad, and she was fought the wind and the debris it was dislodging and hurling at them.

“You’ve already demonstrated conclusively that you are not invulnerable,” Sif shot back.

“Closer to it than you,” Lucy said.

“Ladies, you’re both valuable members of the team,” Phil said tightly. “Can we please _keep moving_?”

Lucy shot a glare at him and adjusted their angle so that they were moving with the wind and aiming for the leeward side of the building Rogers was perched on.

“How the fuck is Barton still trying to conduct a firefight in the middle of all this?” she muttered, spitting rain.

“Barton isn’t even on this continent, Jones,” Phil informed her, holding up a hand against the spray. The sound of shattering masonry reached them over the wind, and he flinched. “And this was supposed to be an non-mission.”

“Every day’s a mission when the Hulk is involved. I’d have thought you had that figured out by now.”

“I don’t think Banner’s why this has really gone sideways.” Phil jumped as a flying roof tile shattered against the forcefield.

“Well, _I_ wasn’t the reason we wound up in a shitty motel room with a trail of incompetent black-ops thugs trying to _fuck_ that’s a rocket launcher. Everybody who’s not necessarily invulnerable to explosives, fire, or shrapnel run!”

Lucy was unsure how Ross had managed to afford someone professional or suicidal enough to keep aiming at a secondary target with the goddamned Hulk kicking his teammates across a parking lot less than ten feet away from him, but he had undoubtedly done so. Phil slipped in a puddle, the slight loss of purchase allowing the wind to finally knock his feet out from under him. Sif paused and helped her haul him up between them. They scrambled for shelter, the roar of the ordnance mingling with the howl of the storm in a way that made the hair on the back of Lucy’s neck stand up. It was Hummingbird’s war-song overlaid with the roar of a jaguar. She blinked and shook her head to clear it. Her ears were ringing from the explosion. She didn’t quite remember dragging Phil into the shadow of a warehouse, but her fingers were wrapped around his belt, Sif had an arm under his shoulders, and they were huddled together in the downpour.

“I don’t hear any more gunfire,” Lucy panted. “But that is definitely Barton on that roof.”

Phil leaned back against the wall. “You need to kill this storm.”

The Hulk roared, and someone else’s angry shouting responded. Lucy rolled her eyes. “Oh my fucking god, dude, stay down already. What the hell are you trying to prove?”

“Jones.”

“Yes, yes, I’m fucking _trying_. It’s like trying to grab a tilt-a-whirl made of cacti and live electrical wires.” She dragged the back of her arm across her face, trying to clear her eyes. “You two get inside, see if you can the captain to call everybody else back to a central position. If I can’t shut this goddamned thing down, I might be able to cut it off at the knees just by getting out of here.”

The blinding flash she’d caught a glimpse of earlier finally touched down, kicking a cloud of pulverized concrete and steam into the air. The wave of thunder that followed made her lungs rattle in her chest and her bones vibrate in her flesh. Thor crouched in the center of the blast, looking around like he was completely unprepared for the ferocity of the storm.

“Oh, good fuck. This is all we need.”

“He’s a storm god, isn’t he?” Phil sighed, sounding resigned.

“Yup,” Lucy said.

“Well.”

“Well.”

“Sister! We must have words!” he bellowed, catching sight of them.

“He’s talking to me, isn’t he?” Lucy grunted.

“So it would seem,” Sif agreed.

“When he gets here, tell him to go fuck himself.”

“I--”

Lucy took a deep breath, let herself relax, and snapped her fingers. She stumbled as she found herself standing on the unstable surface of a sand dune.

“Shit,” she sighed, wringing out her hair and then her shirt. The sky above her began to cloud over. “Oh, come the fuck on! No more fucking storms! This is _bullshit_!”

Lucy concentrated, scowling at the sky. Stupid brother. He was capable of making sure that Sif didn’t get punted into orbit by Banner, at least. Stupid Coulson, insisting on an interview and dragging the wrong Avengers along with him. Stupid Ross, who on any sane planet would be in jail by now. Her hands curled into fists, and the clouds froze, seemed to convulse, and then dispersed. It was at least easier to stop when it was still the seedling of a storm, she thought. It was still going to be a problem, though. She shivered. What the fuck could Thor have possibly needed to talk to her about in the middle of a fucking typhoon?

“Probably the same stupidity he always needs to talk about,” she muttered to herself. “Why can’t it be some _novel_ stupidity, like ‘I need someone to pet-sit this weekend and the Man of Iron cannot be trusted to feed my noble canine!’ or ‘What do you think of this wallpaper swatch?’ for once?”

She kicked at the sand, then sat down heavily. She was tired. Her arm hurt. She probably only had a few hours before Thor turned up demanding to talk about whatever was so damn important. The adrenaline of the past hour would wear off soon. She wondered if she should bother taking a nap. In the sky above, Huītzilopōchtli was winning the fight. She closed her eyes, the scale of it making her stomach roil.

“Fuck everything,” she hissed.

*****

“What happened here?” Thor demanded, wringing out his cloak.

“Jones accidentally summoned a storm. The men in the pile over there tried to kidnap Banner. Divers other amusements were had by all,” Tony said quickly, shrugging. “You showed up and hit things with a hammer. Like me, for example.”

“You flew into the hammer, friend Tony. It is not the same thing at all.”

“At least the storm broke when Jones took off,” Steve sighed. “I was beginning to think we weren’t going to have a city left afterwards.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Tony inquired, plowing ahead without waiting for a response. “How do you still have perfect hair in spite of all that? _How_?”

“I don’t. Do I? I never really paid much attention to it.”

Tony stared at him. “I hate you sometimes, you know that?”

Steve shook his head.

Thor turned to Phil. “Agent Coulson, you must alert Director Fury immediately. My mother is coming to bring my sister home.”

“That’s not such a great idea, Thor. Give me and Sif a little more time, and I’m sure we can bring her around.”

Sif gave him a dubious look, and Thor’s shoulders sagged. “You don’t understand, agent. She will be dissuaded by no one. She felt Loki’s death most keenly, and her hope has been rekindled like the fires of the dwarven forges. She is coming.”

“This is...not good, Thor,” Phil sighed. “This is not good at all.”


	35. Chapter 35

Lucy rolled out of bed and stretched, flexing her fingers cautiously. Her arm felt fine. She yawned and registered the smell of bacon cooking.

"Best case scenario is that I've got a brain tumor," she muttered. She pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and padded toward the kitchen.

Thor looked up from the stove and beamed at her.

"Did you sleep well?" he asked brightly.

"How did you get into my house?" she grumbled, her eyes going to the spread already laid out on the table. He'd made enough food to feed a baseball team, and she'd managed to sleep through it.

He nodded to the living room, where the dodo was ripping the stuffing out of an armchair.

"Little feathered backstabber," Lucy muttered. "Who else are you expecting? Half of SHIELD?"

"Just us. Sif mentioned that you were underfed of late."

Lucy rubbed her face. "I am too tired to have this argument with you right now."

"Then do not," he suggested gently. "Not everything always needs to be argued about. We could just eat in peace."

She eyed the food. She was tired. Between the fossil spine punching through her arm and the hurricane and trying to keep everyone from getting shot, smashed, or blown through the side of a building, the whole pain-blurred, rain-soaked incident had taken it out of her. She really didn't feel like arguing right now. She was hungry. The pizza was a distant memory, and she had more than burned through whatever overly-salted, partially-hydrogenated sustenance it had provided. The food smelled good. Her phone chirped, and she glanced at it, frowning.

"Did you send my accountant out on a shopping trip?" she asked.

"I requested his assistance," Thor confessed. "Midgardian markets are still something of a challenge. The magic that animates the machines does not listen to reason or honor bargains."

"Yeah, self-checkout's a trap," she agreed. 

"You understand, then?" He beamed at her.

"My house is letting in destructive pests and uninvited guests, I find myself vaguely giving a rat's ass about annoying SHIELD agents, my accountant is billing me for grocery runs with a five percent surcharge because he apparently had to listen to a lecture on pork products from a disturbingly enthusiastic butcher, and I can't bring myself to care that this smells like a pan-fried bribe. I've given up on understanding anything at this point. I have officially lost control of my life."

His smile faded, and he put down the spatula and spread his arms.

“Do not try to hug me. I am not in the mood for hugs.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes and ignored the worried look he gave her.

“Very well. What are you in the mood for?” he rumbled. She had the momentary, wild mental picture of him as an enormous lion. Something in the way their bodies vibrated when they roared. She felt half asleep, still, and desperately out of synch. _I’m dreaming_ , she thought. _Or high. Or dead. Maybe I died and this is some weird pocket of the afterlife where I have to deal with unfinished business for eternity._

She shook herself. She needed to finish waking up. “A smoke. And bottle of moonshine. And a giant pile of food that I didn’t have to cook, so yes, _thank you_ for breaking into my house and hijacking the actual human beings I actually know and making breakfast.”

“See? What would you have done if we hadn’t come?” he asked, his tone cautiously teasing.

“Eaten two packages of frozen waffles, possibly without toasting them first.”

“But you can conjure flame without effort,” he reminded her, his lips curling back up at the edges.

“Officially lost control of my life,” she grunted, making her way out onto the porch. 

She felt raw, still, and the weird tenderness in his expression was like coarse salt on a fresh cut. She closed her eyes and inhaled half a cigarette. She almost couldn’t tell he was in the house, if she let her concentration slip. It was like he was managing to blend into the background of her existence, which should have been roughly as conceivable as being able to hide a Clydesdale in a minivan. The sun beat down on her, loosening the knot in her chest and shoulders, and did nothing for the vague sense of static in her ears. It was like being too close to where lightning was about to strike. Her eyes flickered open, and she stalked back into the kitchen.

“You.” He blinked at her, startled and guilty. “Get that hammer out of my house this instant.”

“Oh,” he said quickly. “Is that all?”

She pursed her lips, then took a deep breath. One thing at a time. “Hammer. Out. Now.”

“Is there any particular place you’d prefer I leave it?”

“Nope. Outside. Wherever.”

She seized a piece of bacon and chewed on it, waiting. He carted Mjolnir out to the garden, shooing the dodo along in front of him for good measure. The feeling of being caught in an electrical storm faded immediately, and Lucy let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She felt closer to normal than she had since the museum. The chair had been effectively demolished. She gestured deliberately, and the shredded upholstery and disemboweled cushions righted themselves. He smiled tentatively at her when he returned.

“Better?”

“Yes. Thank you.” He piled a plate high with food and shoved it at her. “What else should I be yelling at you about?”

“I meant what I said,” he sighed. “We do not have to always argue. We could just be, for a time.”

Lucy broke open a poached egg and scooped up the yolk with a piece of toast. “Theoretically, yes. But you seem to think I would be pissed over something. It’s no good not arguing about something if I don’t know what I’m arguing about.”

“You are always angry over something. Often I find that it’s something that cannot be remedied,” Thor sighed. “Could we not call a truce, just for a few hours?”

“Is the planet on fire?”

“No.”

“Is there an army of SHIELD agents outside?”

“No.”

“Is Fury going to try to bill me for the damage from that hurricane?”

“Not to the best of my knowledge.”

“Is Coulson extremely disappointed in me?”

Thor grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. “I do not think he is any more so than usual, Loki.” He caught her glare. “Lucy. Please, just eat.”

She sighed. “So, what’s this about, then? You just felt like cooking and your girlfriend didn’t feel like getting her kitchen trashed?”

“Jane has never complained of the state in which I have left her kitchen,” Thor said firmly. “Is it so beyond imagining that I might want to see you? Or to repay the debt of hospitality I incurred with the other Avengers?”

Lucy crunched on the egg-soaked bread and rooted around in a cabinet until she found the French press. She was reasonably sure she had enough coffee left to make a pot.

“Should I even bother pointing out that you barging into my house and cooking food I’m paying for doesn’t exactly count as reciprocation?” she asked.

“It hasn’t escaped my notice, no,” he said gravely. “But it is the best I can do under the circumstances. If you’d be willing to visit the tower without nefarious intent--”

“Nope.”

“Then this is...” He looked around and shook his head. “It is an honest effort. Please believe me.”

Lucy swallowed the last of the toast and opened the freezer. She poked around until she found the small can of coffee under a melded block of ice cubes. She did believe him, at least as far as that was concerned. He wanted her to _like_ him almost as much as he wanted her to love him. And it was difficult not to, at times, even when he was doing things like ruining everything. There was a warmth to him that was intensely comforting, especially now when so much else was dissolving and shifting and being reworked into something new and unfamiliar. She measured the coffee out and boiled a pot of water with a snap of her fingers. The food and the activity were helping clear her head already. 

“Have you no words for me, sister?” Thor asked softly.

She needed to stop wrestling with the changes. She was reacting instead of acting, and it was going to get her killed. She needed to pick her battles and fight them instead of floundering at everything she didn’t like. This could wait until after she’d dealt with Tezcatlipōca and Quetzalcohuātl’s mess.

“How do you take your coffee?” she grunted, filling the press. He beamed at her. “Okay, seriously. Do not take this as an invitation to drop by whenever the fuck you feel like it, guy. I’m not throwing you out _today_. Tomorrow, or when you haven’t cooked breakfast, or when I’ve got a worse headache, are all different stories.”

“It is more than enough for now,” Thor assured her. “Especially as Sif reports that things have been hard of late.”

“Not really. With the exception of having to babysit her, I mean. Maybe she was talking about it from her perspective? I’m not exactly an easy person to babysit, either.”

“She was not here to babysit you, and you most assuredly were not expected to babysit her,” he admonished. “She is one of the finest warriors in all of Asgard.”

“And you’ve got a magic hammer, but you still managed to get on the wrong side of a dragon’s face and like, everything else you’ve ever been beaten up by. And you can’t work a supermarket. That Coulson lets you wander around without an interpreter doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t need one. It’s not like being really excellent at stabbing people with a sword translates into you being okay wandering around a foreign place all by yourself.” Lucy pried open a container of fruit salad. “Oh, wow, this has mango in it.”

“That is a bad thing?”

“No, that’s a good thing. An unexpected, good thing. Usually stores cheap out and use like watermelon instead. Which is also good, but, you know. Not as good.” She studied his face. “You’ve never had either, have you?”

“No,” he said warily, as if expecting her to mock him.

She rolled her eyes and flicked a bit of fruit onto his plate. “Here. Try a piece.”

He chewed it thoughtfully. “You’ve done all right for yourself wandering around a foreign place.”

“Maybe if you don’t want to argue today, don’t pick fights?” she suggested tartly.

He sighed. “I was thinking it might be time for you to see our mother.”

Lucy chewed a few more times and swallowed. “She’s already here, isn’t she? Did you leave her at my accountant’s house?”

“No!” he said, shocked.

“Cafe down the street? Tell me you didn’t leave an alien queen who is also your mom down the street at a sleazy cafe that even the locals only go to for free wifi.”

“I did not! Of course I did not leave _our_ mother alone in a strange world,” he said firmly.

“I cannot believe you would pull this shit, Thor.” He tilted his head. “Okay, yes, obviously I _can_ totally believe you would pull this shit. Seriously, though, I’m calling Fury and ratting you out. I’m not hugging it out with your mom. Line in the sand, Thor.”

“I do not believe Director Fury will be terribly sympathetic,” he warned.

“Fury had his ability to feel sympathy surgically removed at a secret SHIELD installation after his first week on the job,” Lucy retorted. “Which is fine with me. I don’t need his fucking sympathy, I need him to be a sane person that you’ll listen to.”

“He is already aware of the situation.”

Lucy put her phone back in her pocket and took a deep breath. “Okay, that’s it. Out. Out of my house.”

“Lucy, please.”

“Nope. Out.”

“Will you not hear me out?”

“There is no conceivable thing you could say that could persuade me that this is anything other than a sick joke and/or catastrophe waiting to happen, you unbelievably dense alien interloper. So, no, I’m not hearing you out. I’m throwing you out.”

“She will not be put off.”

“I think you radically underestimate my ability to dodge people I don’t want to talk to,” Lucy growled.

“You could not keep me out this morning,” he sighed, not moving from his spot at the table.

“I wasn’t actively _trying_ to keep you out,” she said flatly. It was almost true. She shook her head. “Absolutely unbelievable. There really isn’t a part of ‘I’m not your damn brother’ that you’re _capable_ of hearing, is there?”

“I know who you are, and I know what you are to us. Even if you do not know yourself.”

“And when you turn out to be unbelievably wrong about this?”

“I will not.”

“We’ll see about that,” she muttered.

“Please, just speak with her.”

Lucy closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. Maybe his mother would be more likely to see reason than her son or husband. Maybe she’d be dead, again, by then, and none of it would matter. She couldn’t bring herself to really believe either possibility. Maybe she was losing her touch at deluding herself.

“Get out. Leave the food. Take the bird. I’m calling Coulson and getting this straightened out.” His face fell. “ _If_ you just show up here with your mother--or Hubbard help you both your mother _and_ your father--and expect me not to flip out, I will set you on fire and then throw a tantrum so large Asgard will invent television just to show reruns of the _COPS_ episode it turns into. We clear on that?”

“We love you and only want you to come home.” He looked like he was going to try to hug her again.

“And I only want you all to be less insane.” She popped a blueberry into her mouth and spread her hands. “Looks like none of us get what we want.”

“Think on it, please.”

“Out.”

He sighed heavily and stood. “I am sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.” _It’s not like any of us asked for this, bro,_ she thought. She needed to get Coulson and Fury on her side on this. Stall the Asgardians. Something. Thor pulled her into an embrace faster than she would have thought possible. “Jesus fucking Christ, I am going to murder you, dude.”

“And yet you’re hugging me back,” he pointed out, his lips moving against the top of her head.

So she was. Lucy scowled. “I’m...lining up a shot at your kidneys.”

It was not her most convincing lie. Not even close. She’d lied more confidently about laughable things, obvious things, undeniable things. _Maybe Banner’s right. I’m pretty sure this is what self-sabotage looks like. I’m pretty sure this is fucking textbook, right here._

“You cannot move your arms enough to get in a killing stroke at that angle,” he informed her.

“Magician,” she reminded him.

“Take care of yourself until we meet again, sister,” he said firmly, giving her another squeeze before letting go. 

Lucy snorted, then waited until he was gone before calling Coulson. “So, we’ve got an alien invasion on our hands?”


	36. Chapter 36

Lucy took a deep breath and hauled herself up onto the balcony. _You can do this. You can absolutely do this. This is not going to turn into a thing_ , she told herself. She scrambled over the railing and brushed herself off. Of course it was going to turn into a thing. It had already turned into a thing. Twice. At least twice. She looked over her shoulder, glancing down to the manicured lawn five stories below. It wasn’t too late to climb back down and run away. She could put this off until tomorrow. Maybe she could pull one of those idiotic tricks Sif was always talking about, where everyone wound up in dresses and drunk off their asses and lost on the tundra for two weeks. Sure, it _could_ start an interdimensional alien war, but if there was no provable Earth involvement and it was just Asgardians being stupid in a foreign country, it probably _wouldn’t_. Coulson would know it was her and never speak to her again, but it was easier to leave gloating, villainous messages on his machine anyway. She grabbed the rail and made to swing her leg back over it, freezing when the door burst open.

“What are you doing out here?” Sif demanded, glaring at her.

“Uh. Dithering?”

The warrior rolled her eyes and sheathed her sword. “Thor said he couldn’t find you. Where have you been?”

“ _Around_.” Lucy crossed her arms. “Can I come in? I was informed in no uncertain terms that my presence was expected.”

“That was days ago, and you smell like a tidepool.”

“That’s because I fell in one,” she gritted. “So long as we’re complaining about comparative levels of hygiene, you smell like ozone and rust.”

“One of the perils of fighting alongside Thor,” Sif said evenly. “Fell in, or were thrown in?”

“First one, then the other. Turns out that hauling horrors from before the dawn of man out of the ocean without their cooperation is something of a chore. Are you going to let me in?”

“You could have bathed first.”

“You’re lucky I dried off first,” Lucy grunted.

“Swear you will not attempt to harm the queen.”

“Oh, my fucking god. Seriously?”

Sif shot her a look. “It’s a formality. _Do_ you intend to harm the queen?”

“Don’t be stupid. Of course I don’t. Why would I--”

“Then swear it and let’s get on with this,” she sighed, cutting her off.

“On anything in particular?’ Lucy asked.

“Whatever you believe in most firmly.”

Lucy thought for a moment. “I hereby swear on the inevitability of the heat death of the universe that I’m not going to harm the queen of Asgard.”

“By the...?” Sif rubbed her neck irritably. “Be...good. For once, just behave yourself.”

“I’m here to put this stupidity to rest once and for all, not start more trouble,” she said firmly. “You can trust me on that one.”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t just take your word--”

“Will you two stop bickering and come inside this instant?”

Lucy turned at the mild, firm, warm voice and felt her jaw drop. The woman was tall, stately, and striking. For an Asgardian, she seemed on the less imposing side, except for the way she somehow lit up the entire space in a benevolent glow that was too overwhelmingly inviting not to be terribly dangerous. Lucy shifted her weight back, some dim reptilian instinct finally kicking in. Back over the balcony it was, then.

“Your Majesty,” Sif murmured, elbowing Lucy sharply.

“Your, uh, mom.” _Oh,_ shit, _that came out wrong._ “Maternal majesty. Jesus Christ, I’m babbling. I’m sorry. You’re like the platonic ideal of motherhood.” _Still babbling._ “Which you probably didn’t need me to tell you. At all. I’m Lucy Jones, and this is probably the least coherent I’ve been in over a decade. I apologize profusely for any confusion.” _Not too late to jump over the railing and make a run for it._ “Nice to meet you.”

The woman tilted her head ever so slightly, her eyes gentle. “Please, come in. I’m sure you can explain what you were trying to say over coffee.”

She turned and swept back inside, gesturing for them to follow. Sif nudged her forward, and Lucy gripped the railing hard enough to warp the metal.

“Come on,” Sif hissed, jerking her chin at the door.

“Changed my mind, give her my regrets,” Lucy hissed back.

“Have you lost your mind? Let go of that!”

“I’m not going in there. I’ve read fairy tales. I know how this ends,” Lucy grunted. _To look on her is to love her, which means it’s too fucking late already, but at least I can try to weasel out of this, right?_ Sif gave her an exasperated look and tried to pry her fingers up.

“It ends with us both getting stuck mucking out the stables for a week. Now stop being ridiculous!”

“If the both of you are quite finished whispering and conspiring, I’m waiting.” There was the slightest edge of impatience to it, mixed with something else. Apprehension? Lucy yelped as Sif’s teeth sank into her shoulder and let go in surprise, sending them both crashing to the floor.

“Ha!” Sif whispered, grabbing her hand and hauling her to her feet.

“You bit me!” Lucy snapped. “What are you, a toddler?”

“The best diversion is an effective diversion,” she retorted. “If it’s any consolation, you taste like brine.”

“It’s not much of one, because seriously, who goes around biting people?” Lucy rubbed her shoulder.

“ _Just get in there_ ,” Sif growled, rolling her eyes and nudging her forward.

“I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer in the way of hospitality,” Frigga apologized, nodding to the coffee table. “We weren’t expecting guests.”

The table was covered in anything that could conceivably be wanted with coffee, and Lucy managed a rictus of a smile as she tried to think of a polite response. Sif elbowed her again.

“I, uh, yes. You weren’t. Um.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. _Get it together._ “Entirely my fault, I’m afraid. That is, I didn’t tell anyone I was coming. I, uh, understand that there’s some persistent confusion. People think, for some reason, over my objections, that I’m....” She swallowed. She felt like she was choking. It was one thing to know that this would require disappointing a grieving mother, and quite another to be in front of her. “Well, that I’m your son. I thought it would be best if I, uh...if I put that to rest once and for all. I’m sorry for your loss, but, as you can see, I’m not. Your son, I mean.”

“Thank you for your candor. I’ll consider your words most carefully. Please, won’t you sit down?”

Lucy blinked, then found herself sitting down across from the queen. Sif hovered a little closer than was strictly comfortable. Probably getting ready to pounce in case she tried to make a run for it, she thought sourly.

“People in this family don’t really take people at their word very often, do they?” she grumbled. Frigga pressed a cup of coffee into her hands.

“We have our reasons,” Frigga assured her. “It’s not mead, I’m afraid, but Thor tells me it’s customary for Midgardians to drink it.”

“Mead? Hmm.” Lucy slipped a flask out of her pocket. _Might as well take this right off a cliff, then._ She added a splash of whiskey to her coffee, then did the same for Frigga’s. The hospitality of a goddess, she thought. Reciprocating immediately with her own liquor was a weak counter, but still, it was something. “A bit closer now, I should think.”

The queen nodded, looking for all the world as if she were weighing her. Lucy had an odd sense of dislocation and wasn’t sure what chilled her more, the thought of being rejected or the thought of being accepted. She cursed herself for not headbutting Sif and diving over the balcony when she’d had a chance.

“Tell me about yourself.”

“Uh, me? Not much to tell. I mean, I’m a magician. I gather it means something a little different here than on Asgard.”

“I doubt that the differences are so very large. I’d wager it’s more a matter of perception.” Frigga sipped her coffee. “I understand you’ve saved my firstborn several times now.”

“Well. Yes. But don’t read too much into it. The first time was because him dying put the world at risk, and the second time was sort of incidental.”

“And the third and fourth times?” she asked softly.

“I think I may have been too drunk to remember those?” Lucy offered, thinking furiously. She’d dredged him out of the underworld, and she’d stopped the dragon. What else could he possibly have told her?

“You were drunk when you fought Fafnir?” Sif asked, sounding impressed.

“Not entirely, but--”

“And Amora?” she persisted.

“Oh, right. Amora. But that was more of a continuation of the first time.”

“And the woman with no face?” she prompted.

“The woman with no...? Oh, come on, Sif. The secret president doesn’t count. Nobody there could properly have _killed_ him,” Lucy protested.

“He disagreed,” Frigga pointed out.

“That’s as may be, but this makes it seem like there’s a pattern that isn’t really there,” she said firmly. “I don’t make a habit of rescuing him. I really, genuinely don’t.”

“Nevertheless, I am grateful.”

Lucy blushed scarlet. “It’s not....Anyone would have...You’re welcome.” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m usually more articulate than this.”

“You’re ill at ease?” Frigga asked gently.

“You remind me a great deal of my mother. I’m not sure why.”

“I am the Allmother.” Frigga sipped her coffee slowly. “Thor told me that you lost your parents when you were still young.”

“Not so young that I couldn’t take care of myself, but yes.”

“You have my condolences.”

“Thank you.” Lucy fidgeted. She didn’t want to talk about her parents with this woman. Her hands tensed around the coffee cup, and she tried to steady them. She didn’t want to listen to this woman talk about Loki. Just the idea of it was enough to scorch her skin. There was a remove when Sif spoke of him. When Thor did it, it was like nails on a chalkboard. Frigga...her words had the power to reshape things. She could already feel a need to see her smile stealing through her. If she could make her smile, she might be able to remember what her own mother’s smile looked like. If she could make her laugh....

“Are you all right, child?” Frigga asked.

“No.” She shook her head and drained the mug, focusing on the taste and heat and shape of it. Bitterness. Sharpness. Distraction. “Coming here was a mistake. A pretty big one, as far as things go. I should leave.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“I really should...go. Now.” Lucy stared at her hand. When had the queen taken it? She pulled back, and Frigga relinquished her hold with visible reluctance, but she did let go. Lucy relaxed slightly.

“If you leave now, might you return tomorrow?” she asked, smiling sadly.

“Um.” Lucy tried to shape her mouth around the word ‘no,’ knowing it would erase that smile.

“I would like to speak to you at greater length. I think that we have much to talk about.”

“Uh.” _I’m doomed. I am fucking doomed._

“Perhaps without the fight with Sif as a preamble?”

“Sure,” she blurted. _I might as well have tickets for the Hindenburg._

“At sunset, then.” Frigga beamed at her.

“Sure,” she repeated mechanically.

“Sif, would you show her to the door, please?”

Frigga rose, and, before Lucy could protest, drew her into a quick embrace. She let go again almost before the contact registered. Lucy swallowed and fell into step behind Sif. _Sweat, and sun, and chalk dust, and cheap knock-off Chanel that hasn’t been made since ‘95._ It had been a long time since she’d remembered anything but gasoline and blood when she’d thought about how her mother smelled. Lucy rubbed her eyes. She was fucking gone. Sif gave her a sidelong look before opening the suite door to let her out.

“The guards aren’t even going to see you, are they?”

“Nope.”

“You _will_ come back tomorrow?”

“Yup,” she said grimly.

“I’ll requisition some mead from somewhere, then.”

Lucy mumbled something incoherent under her breath and darted into the elevator.

*****

“She’s gone?” Frigga asked, wiping tears from her face. Sif nodded.

“Was that...wise, majesty?”

Frigga laughed and shook her head. “I love my husband, Sif, and I love my son. But between the two of them, I think it’s a miracle they haven’t gone stampeding over a cliff by now.”

“A fair point,” Sif agreed carefully.

“This has to be done gently and with care. When has Loki ever responded well to feeling trapped?” she sighed.

“You’re certain, then?”

“I would know my children anywhere, in any shape. I’m certain.” She flexed her fingers. “Besides, I never thought I would hold my secondborn again. I have done so, just now. What can be impossible after that?”


	37. Chapter 37

Lucy leaned back on the park bench, soaking in the early morning sun. It felt...good. Promising. She felt better than she had in a while, if she were being honest. Not good enough to be actually looking forward to seeing Frigga again, but enough that she thought she might be able to get through it without embarrassing herself. Again. She wondered how Thor had ever managed to refuse his mother anything. She laced her fingers together behind her head. Of course, a fair number of her mother’s students had thought the same about her, but how many times had she defied that expectation, immunized against the seemingly fatal disappointment of Mrs. Jones by a lifetime of exposure? Maybe his version of sneaking home a sack full of cicadas to keep as ‘pets’ and then accidentally setting them loose during a dinner party had been...invading a foreign country. She frowned. Then again, maybe not.

Her pocket buzzed insistently, and a few squirrels stood up, tails going still until they located the source of the sound. She answered it, and they scattered.

“How did things go with Frigga last night?” Phil asked.

“With who? What are you hassling me about now, Coulson? I actually haven’t done anything this time,” Lucy said quickly. “At all.”

“The Hulk could smell you from two floors down. Something about seaweed and barnacles.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Of course not. And you’re just staring at a bottle of vodka without drinking it for no reason whatsoever.”

“Ha! I am staring at a bottle of _rum_ without drinking it for no reason whatsoever.” She tucked the bottle behind her back. “Suck on that, agent. Your deductive skills are getting rusty.”

“Do I need to give you the speech about not embarrassing the planet again?”

“If you want? I mean, to be honest, if you start that up, I’m just going to put the phone down and walk away again.” Lucy stretched out her legs and crossed her ankles, the grass cool against her bare feet.

“Jones.”

“Sorry, Coulson, that speech was boring as hell. You want people to sit through stuff like that, you need to go find a bottle of supersoldier serum and pour yourself into a snappy leather outfit and make it in person.”

“I thought you said you didn’t listen to it?”

“I’m extrapolating based on the thirty-second snoozefest preview.”

“Just don’t show up to whatever second meeting you arranged drunk.”

“But I’m at my most adorable when I’m drunk.”

“Not really. You’re just incoherent when you’re drunk.”

“Precisely my point, Coulson.” Lucy heard him snort on the other end of the line. “And how do you know there’s a second meeting?”

“You’re not launching yourself full-tilt into something wildly inadvisable.”

Lucy puffed out her cheeks and looked around. It was still early enough that the park was quiet, but there were more people than there had been half an hour ago.

“I’m violating open-container laws,” she offered.

“That doesn’t, and never will, count as wildly inadvisable, Jones. That barely qualifies as moderately inadvisable.”

“What if I’m not launching myself full-tilt into something wildly inadvisable because I’m turning over a new leaf?” she asked. A pair of bullfrogs climbed out of the pond in front of her. Phil made a strangled noise and covered it with a coughing fit. “Are you _laughing_ at me, Coulson?”

“Of course not,” he said hoarsely.

“You are.”

“I promise--”

“You kept a straight face when that guy dressed as _the Hamburglar_ tried to blow up the Hoover dam with a delivery van full of firecrackers, and you’re laughing at _me_.”

“--I’m not.”

“You’re provoking the supervillain who has a dinner appointment with the queen of an alien planet. This is what it’s come to.”

“So it’s this evening, then?”

“Because that would be irresponsible, Coulson. Like, grossly irresponsible. Even by the standards of somebody who hangs up on people when they’re making ransom demands for second-tier national monuments.”

“Should we have anything in particular on hand? Sif’s been extremely subtly trying to requisition things for ‘no reason.’ Will Thor be attending?”

“A case of whiskey, a kilo of hash, and a suitcase full of non-sequential, unmarked bills.”

“No.” He sighed. “And since when do you care if the bills are non-sequential or unmarked? Do you even know why people ask for either of those?”

“I don’t care. I’m just reasonably sure it makes things marginally more difficult for you guys.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Okay, but you’ve got to admit, it does make it _kind of_ sound like I know what I’m doing.”

“If the person listening to you didn’t know you, then yes, I suppose it might.”

“Be nice, Coulson.” She eyeballed the bullfrogs. There were at least a half-dozen in evidence now. She flipped them off. “You ever get that thing with Stark trying to bug you straightened out?”

“Stop changing the subject, Jones.”

“That’s a no, then,” she chuckled. “Have you tried having really loud sex with somebody you just picked up at a bar? Back when HYDRA wouldn’t stop trying to bug me, I just kept slapping the devices onto AIM’s robots instead. They had to knock it off just because it kept getting so weird around their tech offices. People kept getting drunk and trying to make out with the fax machines. They wound up losing like five percent of their personnel to the publisher that rebooted _Heavy Metal_.”

“I think JARVIS is slightly more capable of taking these things into stride,” Phil answered. The frogs began croaking loudly. “ _What_ is that noise? Are you feeding a tuba into a woodchipper again?”

“No. A tuba going into a woodchipper sounds completely different. That’s a bunch of bullfrogs telling me we’re all going to die.” One of the frogs climbed onto her foot, and she nudged it off. “Get off me, you slimy little bastard.”

“What?”

“Not you. One of the frogs.”

Phil paused for a moment. “Are they right?”

“Well, I mean, yeah? Eventually everything that’s alive _is_ going to die,” Lucy pointed out.

“I don’t know what I expected,” he muttered to himself.

“Frogs are awful, Coulson. This is a well-established fact. They’re the only animal aside from man to kill for fun.”

“Barracudas, cows, most members of the feline and dolphin families, almost every other primate currently known--”

“ _It was rhetorical_.” Lucy rolled her eyes. “Wait, cows? Has that been verified? I was under the impression that cows pretty much couldn’t feel joy or understand the _concept_ of fun.”

“It’s been speculated, with a reasonable basis in fact, that they take a certain amount of...satisfaction in the death of coyotes.”

“What kind of weird superscience are you people funding over there? I mean, I’m not a huge fan of a lot of the things my tax dollars pay for, but if you’re on the road to giving the world superpowered cattle, I’m going to have to bust out the ‘as a taxpayer’ rant.”

“I’m not sure how to respond to that.”

“At a loss for words, huh?”

“Not really,” Phil replied. “It’s just that, on the one hand, any weird superscience involving cattle is being done on Stark’s dime, not the government’s. On the other, the woman who gave the world unionizing, philandering, evil-organization-employed robots does not get to make ‘as a taxpayer’ rants about mutant cows.”

“What’s the phrase you guys always use to weasel out of stuff? ‘I can neither confirm nor deny any knowledge of the incident in question’?”

“Less than five minutes ago, Jones.”

“Well, I can neither confirm nor deny any knowledge of the robots in question, but if I could, I might point out that they’re all technically German citizens and thus not my problem as an American.”

“Germany doesn’t have _jus soli_ citizenship, Jones.”

“Yeah, but they were made in a BMW factory.” The bullfrogs blinked slowly at her. “I think the frogs mean something a little more concrete and specific this time, actually. Like, ‘if you weaponize hamburgers, humanity is doomed.’ Like, ‘Once humanity falls, we’ll rise and reclaim our rightful place as rulers of the land.’ That sort of thing.”

“Uh, the second one isn’t very specific, though. You know, for a prophecy of doom.”

Lucy sighed heavily. “Hello, Barton.”

“Hey, Jones.”

“How’s the quiver working out?”

“It’s pretty good.”

“Think you can take me off speaker-phone at some point, Coulson?” she asked.

“You could put the frogs _on_ speaker-phone,” Clint said. “Then they could give us their dire warning directly.”

“Serve you two right,” Lucy muttered. She could see herself reflected in two dozen horizontal pupils. She picked one up and held it to the microphone. It croaked petulantly. “See?”

“Yeah. Clearly. We’re toast,” Clint snorted. “We should put in an emergency call to Dr. Strange immediately.”

“Mock me at your peril, Barton.”

“If my quiver mysteriously stops working, I’m texting Thor about your meet-up with his mom tonight.”

“Rat me out at your peril, Barton.” Clint laughed. “Seriously. Monocular vision. Rest of your life. I will do it.”

“Please stop threatening my assets, Jones.”

“It’s like you don’t respect my work as a supervillain anymore, Coulson. Go get Banner and tell him I’ve done something flippant that affects the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. I need to bask in the pure moral outrage of someone who doesn’t subvert the Constitution for a living.”

“Something like throwing a tantrum about having to deal with an extraplanetary dignitary?” Clint suggested.

“Barton, it’s an interplanetary dignitary who thinks she’s my mother. I think that’s an okay thing to throw a tantrum about. And, beyond that, if I was up to not throwing tantrums about things like _getting incorrect change from food-truck cashiers_ , I wouldn’t be on the news for turning a dude’s clothes into french fries around the most aggressive flock of seagulls ever observed. I’d be on the news for hypnotizing paparazzi into leaving me alone, like Dr. ‘Not Taking Your Calls Anymore’ Strange.” Lucy tossed the frog back into the pond. “Not to mention, being around her creates a weird emotional dissonance, so I think I’d probably be throwing a tantrum even if I were ordinarily the sort of person who didn’t.”

“Pretty sure the weird emotional dissonance thing is all you. Everyone else thinks she’s great and is okay with beating you up if you upset her,” Clint offered.

“Man, you guys can just fuck right off.” Lucy peeled one of the frogs off her calf. It kicked and wriggled its way onto her arm instead. Once it had a good grip on her skin, it croaked belligerently. “Especially when the helicarrier loses power over Manhattan and you can’t tell which way east is.”

“So the frogs are saying something worth worrying about?” Phil asked sharply.

“The frogs are always saying something worth worrying about, but half the time it’s a lie,” she grunted.

“And this time?”

“Even odds. Like, I’d throw the expired milk that still smells kind of okay out instead of drinking it, if I were you, but I don’t think I’d quit my job and go into hiding Salman Rushdie-style just because of that one hit out on you.”

“There’s a hit out on me?” Clint asked.

“No, Coulson. The milk thing is probably you,” Lucy clarified. “But, I mean, this is according to frogs. I’m not sure I buy them actually being able to tell. You should just play it by ear. It shouldn’t be that big a deal to go get fresh milk, but I don’t know how down you are for packing up and moving to, you know, the Arctic just because of something some no-account amphibian told me.”

“You are terrible at telling fortunes,” Clint grumbled.

“Dude, I have the gift of prophecy now. It’s actually pretty banging, if you’re okay with looking into the gaping abyss of never knowing hope again. Pandora was fucking right to chuck this little monster back in the box and then dump the box into the sea.”

“But you can’t tell me if the frogs are right.”

“Only if I cared enough about either of you to also know everything horrible that’s going to happen for the next couple of months.”

“So that’s a no?” Clint asked.

“That is a _hell_ no.” Lucy lit a cigarette, and one of the frogs jumped onto a ‘No Smoking’ sign. She blew a cloud of smoke at it. “This is like the shotgun-surgery version of prophecy. It sucks.”

“My heart breaks for you, Jones,” Coulson sighed.

“Thank you, Coulson. You have no idea how much your sympathy means to me in this, my darkest hour.”

“I’m glad we’re on the same page,” he said.

“Take me off speaker-phone, you jackass.”

He made an irritated noise before being interrupted by a brief hiss of static. Lucy felt a tug on her braid and reached back. A frog bit her before climbing to her her scalp.

“All right, Jones.”

“Seriously, dude, watch your back. I’ve got a feeling shit’s going south with a quickness around SHIELD.”

“Thank you for the warning. Behave yourself with Frigga tonight.”

Lucy’s lips twisted. “She’s nice. I like her. Not so fond of the whole situation, but not much to be done about that. You heard about the thing down in Cancun?”

“No. You got into a fight with a giant sea scorpion in the Laguna Nichupte during spring break in an age of near-total saturation of smartphones and digital photography, didn’t win, and managed to escape the attention of all major intelligence agencies.”

“Go to hell, Coulson. And keep an eye on Stark. If his electronics get jacked, you could be looking at some serious friendly fire.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. And I’ll see what I can do to keep Thor distracted for a few days.”

“Nice to see you coming in on the right side of the Earth vs. Alien Invaders debate,” Lucy grumbled. The frog chirped in her ear. She swatted it away. “And something about a cellist anniversary.”

“A cellist anniversa....Damn it.”

“Do you need to go take care of something?” she asked smugly.

“I need to go take care of something.”

“Good luck with that.” She hung up and looked at the frogs. Almost a hundred had gathered on the bank. “All right, you little pricks, I’ve got a few hours. Let’s have this out once and for all.”


	38. Chapter 38

“Evening, Sif. Coulson. Random dude.” Lucy straightened her blouse, smoothed down her skirt, and shot the blank-faced SHIELD agent a dazzling smile. Phil scowled at her.

“Do you have any idea how much repairing that park is going to cost?” he asked.

“Coulson, it became necessary to destroy the park to save it. I’m sure you’re familiar with that sort of situation.”

“Jones, they were bullfrogs.”

“Against whom conventional weapons are useless, yes,” she agreed blithely. “Though I think that might put an end to speculation about whether the horde of smaller enemies or the one very large enemy is preferable. I thought I could get the upper hand with that leaf-blower, but hope fails us at the worst of times.”

“And you’re on _our_ side?” the agent asked, his brows finally furrowing.

“Of course not. It’s just become momentarily advantageous for you guys to act like I am. Kind of like everybody has to be kind of polite to Dr. Doom when the camera’s rolling even though he’s like a luchador Hitler with a jetpack because of the whole diplomatic immunity thing and weapons of mass destruction.” Lucy shrugged. “Any sign of the blond water buffalo?”

“No,” Phil said carefully. “But the bill for the damage you did in Mexico came in.”

Lucy snatched the paper from him and glanced over it. “This is in pesos, right?”

“No.”

“Well, then. Let me just go ahead and forward that to my insurance agent.”

She snapped her fingers, and the sheet burst into flame.

“Is that how magicians send things places?” the agent asked, looking impressed. Lucy glanced from him to Phil and back again.

“Oh, you poor darling. Stark is going to eat you alive.”

“Jones,” Phil said warningly.

“Perhaps we should go upstairs?” Sif interrupted, moving forward to take Lucy’s elbow.

Phil held up a hand. “What’s in the box?”

“A coffee cake?”

“Are you asking me, or telling me?” he pressed.

Lucy glared at him. “You’re hassling me about _diction_ now? Fuck’s sake, dude. It’s a goddamned coffee cake. You can’t have any, I’m not leaving it with you, and also go to hell if you think I could possibly fit anything in a box this size that’s more dangerous than just me.”

“You magicked up a coffee cake.” He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Only if stand mixers are now considered arcane implements. I just baked a damn cake, Coulson.” She tucked the package under her arm. “I _can_ do things without magic, you know.”

“And without giving them food poisoning?”

“Bye, Coulson.” Lucy flipped them off and stomped past them, Sif trailing in her wake.

“Maybe you should have climbed up the drainpipe again,” Sif muttered. “They’ve been hovering and fretting for the past two hours. And thank you for dressing more appropriately.”

“This is almost identical to what I was wearing yesterday,” Lucy protested.

“But it’s clean.” Sif looked her over more slowly. “What happened to your arm?”

“Frog bites. Long story.” She ran her hand over her skin, and the marks disappeared.

Sif snorted. “No, it isn’t. I saw it on the news. Accusing them of having salamanders for mothers seems to enrage them most thoroughly.”

“Yeah, that one maybe crossed a bit of a line,” she sighed.

“What’s a coffee cake?”

“It’s a cake. With, um, this sort of sugar crust.” Lucy gestured ineffectually. “It just goes well with coffee, okay? Or anything else, really, because it’s very good.”

“I see.”

“Except you’re using that tone that says you don’t, but you’re having overwhelming doubts about my ability to explain it.”

“I might be.” Sif smiled slightly, and Lucy grunted at her.

“Okay, as someone who’s spent a reasonable time around humans, is there anything I should avoid doing in order to not spark, you know, an intergalactic war, here? Because that would kind of suck. I mean, I’d really regret wasting my time baking a cake if I turn around and pass a plate from the left and thereby accidentally deliver an unbelievable insult to the queen’s mother.”

Sif gave her a long, measuring look. “Manners and customs are not so different that allowances can’t be made. In your case, I’d recommend imitating a normal human to the best of your ability.”

“Ha ha,” Lucy growled. “How droll.”

“You incited a riot among frogs. Even the good agent Coulson was most impressed with it.” Sif smiled at her, her look calculating. “When this is over, you and I should find a quiet tavern, and I will tell you of Asgard.”

“No offense, Sif, but you spent like a week straight trying to tell me about Asgard, and it was not helpful. I don’t see adding alcohol increasing the helpfulness quotient.”

“Then we should find a quiet tavern and talk of other things.”

“Okay, did I miss something? Why would I want to go drinking with you again?”

“Because I’m not Thor?”

“Point.” Lucy hesitated on the landing. “Why would _you_ want to go drinking with _me_? I mean, especially after the thing with the bats, and then your hair, and then that nudist colony, and the pit of sadness and despair that apparently passes for an amusement park in Norway, and then the storm.”

Sif cracked her knuckles and grinned. “It has been very dull, and you’re extremely good at finding trouble.”

“I. Uh. Hmm. That’s actually not a bad answer.” Lucy chewed her lip. “Fuck it, sure, let’s do it. Why not. You know, besides SHIELD frowning on brawls that can be seen from space. But, before we make any definite plans, full disclosure time. And keep in mind that I’m a magician, and I tend to set things on fire when I’m upset, and just walking into this indicates that I’m being ten percent dumber than normal. What was Coulson trying to distract me from with that bill?”

Sif tilted her head, frowning. “He didn’t say he was going to distract you. Are you sure he wasn’t just angry about the park?”

“Fairly sure. He had that sort of deadpan look like he’s stopping just short of lying to me about something. You know the one.” She imitated the carefully neutral expression. “Nothing to see here, move along, pay no attention to the flying elephants fighting with hedgehogs in hovercraft.”

Sif stared at her for a moment, then shrugged. “I must confess I find the inner workings of SHIELD’s warriors to be somewhat esoteric.”

“Yeah, that’s intentional.”

“Are you stalling again?”

“Maybe a little. I feel this creeping and unnatural desire to behave like a reasonable person when I’m around her. She makes me nervous. Does she make you nervous? Never mind, stupid question. You grew up around her.” Lucy shifted her weight from one foot to the other and back again.

“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t sometimes make me nervous,” Sif pointed out.

“No, I know, but it’s probably in that way where she usually doesn’t make you nervous at all, but then sometimes she’s terrifying. You know? Like you go to the beach every day, and the ocean’s great, and then all the sudden there’s a riptide and it’s trying to kill you and you remember that it just does that sometimes.”

“Is there anything in this realm that isn’t prone to attacking mortals?”

“Not really, no. In our defense, your stories made it sound like most of the stuff on Asgard’s got kind of a hard-on for killing you guys, too.”

“We should go in, don’t you think?” Sif asked, prodding her with an elbow. “Get it over with?”

“Yes, by all means, let’s go hang out with your terrifying queen who brings up all sorts of pleasant memories about my dead mother. What could possibly go wrong. I might even get a sudden attack of good judgment and not go drinking with you later.” Lucy smoothed her hair and looked back down the stairs. “You’re sure Thor’s not here?”

“The Warriors Three insisted he accompany them tonight on a ‘pubcrawl’ in Philadelphia. They are not expected back until tomorrow.” Sif opened the door. “Stop being ridiculous, and come in.”

“I’m not being ridiculous,” she hissed back, dropping her voice. “I’m being perfectly--”

“Loki!” a deep voice boomed. 

Lucy barely managed a squeak as she was pulled into a bearhug that effectively crushed her against a gold breastplate. She wriggled and managed to get her face slightly unmashed, then freed one arm enough to wave the box at Sif, who took it before it could undergo further trauma. 

“Odin!” Frigga said firmly. Or at least she thought it was Frigga. It sounded like what she thought Frigga’s voice might sound like, filtered through arms the size of velvet-wrapped anacondas.

After a long second, she managed to lever herself into position to get a look at what was past the armor.

“Grizzly bear Santa Claus!” she yelped. Lucy turned to smoke and darted across the room before resuming her shape. “Jesus Christ, you’re huge.” _Manners, idiot_ , she thought. “Er, your majesty.”

Frigga was shooting him a glare capable of melting steel, and he deflated slightly. “It is good to see you again, child.”

“Uh, yeah. I brought cake? And sorry about the whole ‘grizzly bear Santa Claus’ thing. I wasn’t expecting you. And also I vaguely remember you not being so big, but maybe that was just in comparison to a dragon. Or the concussion.” Lucy realized that she was perched on the mantel and carefully hopped down. Indoors, on his own, Odin seemed to take up half the room. “Um. Nice to properly meet you? Please don’t hug me again. I don’t really do hugs, as a rule.”

“What is a grizzly bear?” Sif asked, breaking the awkward silence.

Lucy conjured a lifelike image of a standing bear. Odin and Frigga exchanged glances. She sighed and rearranged it into the pose of a bear about to charge.

“Ah.” Frigga coughed slightly, and Lucy dismissed the image.

“Santa Claus is sort of a jolly old man who...has a herd of flying reindeer. Big red suit. Culturally inappropriate.” She sighed. “Did something come up? Is this a bad time? I can come back later, if it is. A lot later. Years from now.”

“Odin was anxious to see you again, that’s all,” the queen explained. “Thor has told him so much about you.”

“I wouldn’t put too much stock in those accounts. He seems unusually biased in my favor. Maybe ask Agent Coulson about me sometime if you’ve got a few hours to spend.”

“He said you set things on fire quite effectively,” Odin offered, looking from Lucy to Frigga and back again. She nodded encouragingly.

“Yeah, that is actually quite correct.” Lucy rolled a ball of flame over her palm and then extinguished it. “I am really good at setting things on fire.”

“Though you could stand to be a little more discriminating about it. According to him.”

“Also...surprisingly accurate,” Lucy agreed slowly. “Though honestly a little insulting, into the bargain.”

“And he said that you resist his entreaties to return home,” he sighed, looking disappointed. Frigga’s posture had gone stiff, and Lucy ran her hands through her hair.

“Look, it’s....” She paused and started again. “I appreciate that you’ve lost a child. I do. I can’t imagine how much that must have hurt. You have my sympathies. But I’m not your son. I...my parents were killed in an accident. I was young, but I remember them. I was born here. This _is_ home. Asgard isn’t.”

“You’ve made many enemies here,” Frigga murmured, moving to the couch and sitting down. She gestured to the chair across from her, inviting Lucy to sit.

“Thank you, but I’d prefer to stand.” Lucy held her hands up and leaned against the mantel. “And yes, I have made enemies here. I imagine I’d do much the same anywhere I went. I’ve been told I don’t know when to keep my mouth shut, which, honestly, doesn’t even begin to cover it. Usually it’s not a big deal.”

“And the sea-beast?” Frigga asked gently.

“That’s a little different. I mean, it’s a big deal, but I sort of swore to defeat it. And if I don’t, the world will be destroyed. So, really, that one’s non-negotiable. I didn’t start the fight, but I’m going to finish it.” Lucy rubbed her arm. “I feel like we sort of strayed from the topic a bit. What does me getting into fights a lot have to do with me not being Loki?”

“I had thought to offer you asylum,” she explained. “But if you’re oathbound....”

“Was it a proper oath, then?” Odin asked, his eye narrowing.

Lucy tilted her head. “Do I even want to ask what Thor said about me to prompt _that_ question?”

Behind him, Sif shook her head quickly and mouthed “No” at her. Lucy rubbed her temple and gritted her teeth.

“Yes. About as proper as oaths get around here. I don’t remember it, because I hadn’t been born yet, but I wouldn’t have been born without it.”

“That counts as a proper oath here?” Frigga asked. “Something you can’t remember.”

“I’m not explaining this well, I don’t think.” Lucy rubbed her arm again and paced a little. “It’s like this, see? When there’s something that needs to be done, or should be done, and you need a hero or a magician or a whatever to do it, that’s....Well, that’s a child that’s not going to be sticking around the farm, or tending the shop, or running the kingdom. They’ll be off fighting monsters, or stealing fire, or inventing psychedelics and traffic lights or something. They’re going to be a lot more trouble for a lot less gain for that individual family, right? 

“So a lot of times, depending on how polite the gods in question are, they’ll send the baby to a family that’s agreed to it. Maybe the couple’s too old to have a kid without divine intervention, or one of the parents is already technically dead, or they’re willing to exchange the danger of raising a hero for the glory of the family name living forever, or they’re particularly long-sighted and they know what needs to be done for the good of the world.” She shrugged. “It depends. In my case, my parents couldn’t have children, so my grandfather went to the gods and made a sacrifice and said ‘Give them a child, any child.’ and they took him up on the offer. I apparently promised to do it for another shot at life, so I got tagged in specifically to fight this thing. It doesn’t get much more proper oath-y than that on this planet. Everybody’s already collected the reward, and there’s nobody to take my place if I try to back out. It’s pretty well signed, sealed, and delivered.”

Odin and Frigga exchanged a troubled look.

“So you must see this through.”

“Yeah.” Lucy glanced at Sif, who was intently studying the ceiling tiles and determinedly ignoring her. “I really need you two to understand that I’m not your son. This isn’t some weird, sick prank or way to weasel out of whatever charges get filed when an Asgardian tries to blow up an entire planet full of trolls. _This_ is my world. I’m _me_. None of this is really your concern.”

Frigga’s face fell, and Odin put his hand on her shoulder.

“I’ll just be going now. It looks like you two might have some things to talk about.” Lucy sidled toward the door before realizing that going out over the balcony would let her avoid Coulson. She didn’t react quickly enough to avoid another hug. “Could you please stop that?”

Odin let go and squeezed her shoulders, holding her at arm’s length. She stared at him like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. _I am never hanging out with heroes again. Villains aren’t nearly this grabby._

“Be careful, and bring honor to your house,” he said solemnly.

“I thoroughly intend to. Immediately. As soon as you, um, let go.” He gave her a sad smile and relaxed his hold. “Uh, both of you, be well and, um, safe journey home.”

She gave a half-bow and made her escape, barely noticing when Sif fell in behind her.

“Shouldn’t you stick with them for at least the next few minutes? Maybe make sure nothing gets put to the sword or burned to the ground?”

“I _am_ making sure nothing gets put to the sword or burned to the ground,” Sif retorted. “Put that out.”

“This is supposed to be on fire,” Lucy grunted, taking a drag off the cigarette.

“Not indoors, it isn’t. There are signs posted.”

“The signs can blow me.” Lucy paused for a moment, then started walking again. “Wait, should both of them be here at once? What happens if some dickhole tries to stage a coup?”

“A what?”

“Seize the throne.”

“The Allfather only came to see you. Likely they’ll both be returning home within the hour.”

“I convinced them, then?” Lucy ignored the cold band settling around her ribs. _Stupid misdirected affection. I only just fucking met the woman._

Sif hesitated. “There’s nothing to be done until you’ve defeated your enemy.”

“Shouldn’t you be helping them pack?”

“I’m to stay with you, and,” Sif coughed, “to help you if I can.”

“Nope.”

“It’s not a point of debate.”

“Damn well it’s not a point of fucking debate. You’re not hanging around with me. I appreciate your help from before, but this is really just....” Lucy shook her head. “No. Go find Thor and get him to talk them out of assigning you to the magician detail.”

“Only if you come with me.”

“That didn’t take very long,” Phil observed as they passed him. Lucy kept walking.

“You should have told me Mr. Frigga was here, Coulson,” she called over her shoulder. Sif shot him an apologetic look.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Bar. To start a fight over something. I’ll figure it out on the way.”

“Really?” Sif murmured.

“No. We’re going to find your idiot friends and hope they’re drunk enough to be talked into fixing this,” Lucy hissed.


	39. Chapter 39

“You know, you might have said all it would take to get you guys off my back was a pre-existing commitment,” Lucy said. She adjusted a pair of binoculars and scanned the drunken crowd in the street below. “It would have saved me a lot of time.”

“And you might have said that you would be using your magic to transport us here,” Sif muttered darkly, wiping her mouth on a handkerchief.

“If I’d known you were going to get seasick, I would have.” Lucy shrugged. “At least you fit right in? I swear, there’s like three people barfing in any given hundred square feet of pavement down there. This is bananas.”

The warrior spat and wiped her mouth again. “Can you see Thor?”

“I can’t see anybody we know, which I figure means they’re not down there. I mean, Volstagg’s roughly the size of an elephant even before you account for the inevitable keg on either shoulder.”

“The House of Odin takes its oaths very seriously,” Sif said, straightening up. She held out her hand, and Lucy handed her the binoculars. “If you have sworn to do this, you must do it.”

“Not part of the House of Odin, Sif.” Lucy craned her neck. “This is really, absolutely, spectacularly out of hand.”

“Is this not typical, then?”

“No. This is _fantastic_. Typical pubcrawls are just sad and expensive and then you’re left trying to get home from a neighborhood you’re reasonably sure by that point doesn’t actually exist, and a cab’s out of the question because you can’t remember how to speak English. This is like St. Patrick’s Day and Mardi Gras, only with slightly less public nudity.”

Sif grunted and handed the binoculars back.

Lucy adjusted them again. “Oh, hey, never mind about that last part. Competitive team-streaking. No matter who wins, everybody walks away smiling. You know what? I think this deserves a complimentary refill. For everybody.” She snapped her fingers. A series of banners reading ‘Free Beer’ unfurled over a few knots of empty kegs.

“You are enjoying this _far_ too thoroughly.”

“The past couple of months have been nothing but one irritating mess after another. I’d almost forgotten what fun looked like. This is like the sun, coming out from behind the clouds.” Lucy beamed at her, and Sif rolled her eyes.

“That is not an accurate assessment of your behavior over the past season at all.”

“Well, maybe, but that’s what it’s _felt_ like.”

“Can you,” she waved her hands vaguely, “ _sense_ them at all?”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “You people’s grasp of technical terms is astonishing.”

“You people?” Sif repeated archly, her eyes narrowing. 

Lucy pursed her lips. “Okay, is that really a thing in Asgard, or did the Wasp teach you that when Coulson wasn’t around?”

“Lady Darcy taught us that when Thor and the lady Jane were not present.”

“Is that the little dark-haired girl who keeps resetting Coulson’s ringtone to the national anthem?”

“Yes.”

“She sounds kind of all right. But you’re not allowed to ‘you people’ me. We’d be here all night if I had to explain every permutation of the categories of ‘you people’ you fall into. And yes, I can totally sense them. It’s weird. Thor actually gets a little bit more _Thor_ when he’s drunk. Most people get fuzzier around the edges when they’re trashed.”

“And you?”

“Everything gets fuzzier around the edges when I’m trashed. Perk of being a magician.” Lucy wiggled her fingers in Sif’s general direction.

“Stop that.” The crowd below them was getting rowdier. “Where are they?”

“See that statue? Two blocks up, one block in. I’d offer to just pop us on over, but I get the feeling that’s incompatible with not getting stabbed tonight.”

“Your instincts in this are correct,” Sif told her sourly. “You do understand that Thor is not going to agree with you about not needing assistance in this, don’t you?”

“I’m pretty sure I can talk him into it.” Lucy poked at the fire escape, which creaked alarmingly. “We could fly.”

“No.”

“I totally wouldn’t drop us.”

“ _No_.”

“Spoilsport.” She swung herself over and down, landing on the corroded metal grating with a dull clang.

“Even if you could persuade Thor to see things your way, it was your parents’ desire that you be accompanied. He cannot countermand that.”

“It’s not really his job to countermand anything,” Lucy sighed. “It’s his job to either talk _his_ \--singular, not _mine_ , not _our_ \--parents out of this, because it’s stupid, or explain to them after the fact that, since I can teleport and you can’t, this was never going to work.”

Sif shook her head, then grimaced, her gaze moving to something above and behind Lucy.

“Jones.”

“Stark.” Lucy turned and followed Sif’s line of sight, then blinked at the sight of Tony’s armor. “Why are you covered in streamers?”

“Because you’ve turned Philadelphia into a giant kegger,” he growled.

“No, I haven’t, and that still wouldn’t explain this. You look like a mummy that somebody turned a second-grade art class loose on. How is that stuff not catching on fire?” she asked, gaping at him.

“I’m aware of what I look like, Jones--”

“I don’t think you could possibly be aware of what you look like and still be okay with the public seeing you.” She appealed to Sif, who was covering a barely-suppressed smile with her hand. “Tell him.”

“You look very...festive, friend Tony.”

“Stop listening to her, Sif. Jones, I need you to stop this, immediately. People are going to get hurt.”

“It’s a city-wide block-party. Aside from the normal drunken misadventures, this really should be a low-casualty affair. And again, _this isn’t me_.”

“Really? Because this is you all over.”

“You did replenish their supply of drink,” Sif pointed out.

“So you didn’t start the riot, you just made it worse?”

“We just got here, and I’d characterize it more as making the _party_ \--because this is clearly not a riot yet-- _better_.”

“If you didn’t do this, what are you doing here?”

“We’re here to find Thor,” Sif told him.

“Thor’s here?”

“Along with the three musketeers, yes, and I need him to find him so that he can chaperone Sif while I’m busy not being chaperoned by Sif.”

“Which is an errand doomed to failure,” she said.

“Says you. And since when does that stop you people from trying?”

“‘You people’?” Tony asked.

“Oh, don’t you fucking start,” Lucy snapped. “Remind me again how this rises to the level of an Avengers-grade intervention? Are you guys actually the Fun Police now?”

“It’s just me, and I was already here.”

“You weren’t actually set upon by an elementary school art class, were you? Maybe they got a little hopped up on paste and markers, swarmed you when you weren’t looking?”

Tony ignored her question. “If you didn’t start this, who did?”

“Don’t know, don’t care, if you find them, shake their hand for me,” Lucy said. “We need to find Thor and Company.”

“Indeed. The sooner you hear it from him, the sooner you can let go of these delusions.” Sif nodded to Tony. “We’re on our way to find him.”

“Well, we know where he is. We’re just on our way to meet up with him.” Lucy watched one of the trailing streamers stray too close to an exhaust port.

Sif pointed hurriedly. “You’re alight!”

“What?”

“She means you’re on fucking fire, dude.”

“Shit!”

Lucy rubbed her eyes as Tony batted instinctively at the flame, setting several previously-unignited streamers ablaze. Sif grimaced.

“His armor is fireproof, is it not?” she asked.

“Fuck if I know.”

“Little help here, Jones?”

“Uh, I think there’s a retention pond over there somewhere?” She gestured vaguely at a side street. Sif elbowed her sharply. “Ow! Okay, okay! Jesus. Am I going to have to start wearing armor just to avoid you doing that?”

“It wouldn’t help you. I’m quite adept at getting around it if need be.”

Lucy brought her hands together gently, and the streamers tore loose and fluttered to the ground.

“ _Thank_ you,” Tony grunted.

“You’re _welcome_ ,” Lucy shot back. “Why don’t you stop bothering us and go do whatever wet-blanket routine you’ve got ready for whoever’s running this show? We’ve got throngs to part and princes to harass.”

“You do know only Thor is a real prince, right?” he asked.

“Yeah? It was, like, rhetorical. You know, like when somebody addresses you all collectively as doctors, even though Coulson’s thesis was rejected because he technically didn’t defeat the robot assassin.”

“I’m not even sure how to begin responding to that.”

“I was pretty surprised, too, but it makes sense once you figure that emotionally devastating the robot assassin to the point where it’s rendered inoperable doesn’t count as ‘defeating’ it according to the rules as they stood when he was up for his doctorate.”

“If any of this were true, he’d have just tried again.”

“Well, yeah, if the board had been willing to budge on the charges they levied for him breaking the robot. I mean, come on. You’re going to tell someone they don’t get their degree because they didn’t sufficiently break the robot that’s still so broken you’re being fined the cost of a replacement? It’s bush-league, Heller-esque bullshit. As someone who intended to practice mastery-level Heller-esque bullshit, I genuinely don’t blame him for refusing to go along with it on general principle.”

Tony rubbed his faceplate with one gauntleted hand. “You do not have to fight a robot assassin to finish your thesis.”

“Maybe not your thesis, no, but I’m pretty sure the standards are different when you’re getting a degree in skirt-chasing and when you’re getting a degree in government bastardry. Like, you get awarded lifetime achievement awards for different things when you’re a physicist versus when you’re an atomic-powered mechanical spider controlled by a clone of the Kaiser’s brain.”

“And now I’m 110% done listening to this. See you guys later. I’m leaving.”

“Best of luck to you, Man of Iron. You must tell us of your exploits after you are finished,” Sif said firmly, joining Lucy on the fire escape. Two bolts tore free of the wall.

“Okay, so that is a terrible sign,” Lucy muttered. “This is just a badly-maintained building. Hang on to me for a second.”

“Need a hand with something other than telling fantastic lies about beloved civil servants?” Tony inquired archly.

“Go away before you set something else on fire, Stark.” She took Sif’s hand and snapped her fingers. The landscape blurred around them, then solidified into a small patch of grass near a row of bars. Sif glared at her, then leaned over and retched again. “Before you stab me, I’d like to point out that we should be within a hundred feet of them, and you totally didn’t fall to your doom off a fire escape.”

“If Midgardians are typically felled by drops of thirty feet, I pity you,” Sif hissed.

“Midgardians are frequently felled by tripping over their own feet,” Lucy sighed, looking around. “Once you’re done there, we’re going this way. Which is weird, because I really thought they’d be in eyeshot by now. We’re practically right on top of them.”

A knot of drunken revelers blundered past them, hooting and laughing. Sif glared at her and straightened up.

“I am growing most displeased with that mode of transport.”

“Duly noted. You know, annoying as it is to concede the point, Stark might be right about this getting a little out of hand.”

“How so?” Sif asked.

“Well, those were fourteen-year-olds. Kind of young, even for Philadelphia. I mean, if this were Boston, sure. Philly tends to have vaguely more restraint than that.” She pushed her hair back, then shrugged. “Meh. I’m sure he’ll get it sorted.”

“You sound less than confident in that statement.”

“Well, yes. And also, I really don’t actually care? In terms of supervillainy, getting an entire city sloshed isn’t really the most HYDRA-y of stunts. Somebody’s probably just doped the water supply so they can rob a huge bank or cart off the world’s biggest diamond or moon the Masons or something.”

“And you would be most concerned if it were something more despicable?” Sif demanded.

“Uh....” The warrior narrowed her eyes. “Okay, no, probably not really. Unless it was inconvenient. And even then, yeah, no, probably not. What do you want from me? If I was temperamentally suited for heroics, I’d be a hero.”

Sif snorted.

“Look, you can disapprove of me and walk at the same time. Let’s go. Feel free to silently monologue to yourself about the fact that I ring up library fines and then don’t pay them on the way. Please do not ask me what a library is.”

“Is it all right if I ask you not to insult me by implying that I don’t know what a library is?”

“Well, you can always _ask_.” Lucy sighed and trudged around a pair of cops giggling and making out on the sidewalk. “We should at least be able to hear them bellowing inappropriate Asgardian drinking songs.”

Sif frowned. “You’re right.”

“Of course I am. He’s still in the same general spot. He should be right past that corner.”

“And yet he is not.”

Lucy stopped so abruptly that Sif almost collided with her. “Shit.”

“What?” she demanded, suddenly on high alert.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, put the sword away. You can’t bring a sword to a drunk-fight. Hang on.” She twisted her hands and produced a large purse from thin air. “Here. You can bring this to a drunk-fight.”

“What...is it?” Sif examined it skeptically.

“Brick in a handbag. And before you call it uncivilized or any variant on that theme, I’ll have you know that my grandmother won my grandfather’s hand with a brick in a handbag. Anyway, he’s here, but he’s not _here_. Since we know he’s not up, it stands to reason they’re under us.”

“Underground? Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“There’s all sorts of stuff underground in this country. Hell, that big SHIELD bunker Thor was in before isn’t even the deepest.” She knelt and put her hands on the pavement. “And it feels hollowed out and weird.”

“Magic?”

“No, this is definitely not magic. Any of it.”

“Well, then, how do we get to them?”

“The obvious way would be to--”

“And still be in a condition to fight if warranted,” Sif interrupted.

Lucy looked around. “Stay here. If anybody sasses you, hit them with the purse. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“You’re not leaving me behind. Of the two of us, I’m the more capable fighter,” Sif said flatly, crossing her arms. “If you get into trouble, I won’t be able to assist you.”

“Yes, yes, you’re much more capable of swording a dude right in the chest than I am. I’d point out that if I get into trouble that can’t be solved with the cleansing power of fire, you’re unlikely to be of much help, but I doubt that would do much to persuade you. Fortunately, you can’t stop me.” Lucy winked at her and vanished.


	40. Chapter 40

“Hey.”

“Loki!” Thor beamed. They were in a shallow, cave-like opening. Lucy estimated that the ceiling was roughly ten feet below the sidewalk where she’d left Sif.

“Oh my god, do not start up with that again,” Lucy sighed, dodging a hug. “How drunk are you all?”

“Is this your doing?” Fandral demanded.

“Nope. I’m pretty sure I’ve got better things to do than whatever this is. But Stark’s on it, if you feel like pitching in once you’re back topside. How the fuck did you get down here, anyway?”

“We were making merry, and then the ground opened beneath our feet!” Thor told her. “And we are perhaps more drunk than is strictly advisable, given the circumstances.”

Hogun pointed to a steep tunnel leading up from the cavern. “We slid a great distance, and then landed here.”

“The casks broke,” Volstagg added.

“You didn’t see anybody or hear anything? The whole town’s high, which doesn’t seem to be bothering them, but it’s got Stark’s cast-iron boxer-briefs in a twist.”

“There did seem to be...an excess of mirth amongst the populace,” Thor confessed. “But we saw no evidence of foul deeds.”

“If you didn’t do this, what are you doing here?” Fandral asked.

“Dumping Sif on you. She’s having a rough time with the teleporting thing--”

“Should you really be doing that? Thor said your powers were becoming unpredictable,” Volstagg ventured.

“I...shut up,” Lucy grunted. “Anyway, I’m dropping Sif off with you.”

“I thought our parents had decided that she would keep you safe for the time being?” Thor asked.

“Change of plans,” Lucy said smoothly. “And you’ve got heroing to do, I think. Maybe. Stark probably has a breathalyzer in that suit somewhere. I’m sure you’re good to go, but you know. Insurance purposes and everything.”

“I should speak to Sif about these plans,” Thor murmured.

“Not that we don’t trust you,” Fandral said pointedly.

“Of course we don’t trust her,” Hogun sighed.

“Thank you, Hogun. I’m not stupid, guys. I know you don’t trust me. I’d be a little insulted if you did trust me, in fact.” She patted Thor’s hand. “You talk to Sif for as long as you need. But first we need to get you guys out of here, because, not that the geological disposition of Philadelphia is my specialty, but I’m not sure this is safe. Or even, technically speaking, _possible_ as a normal-person bit of engineering. Can everybody stand back a bit?”

They shuffled back a few paces, and Lucy looked them over. They weren’t as drunk as she’d expected, but they were still drunker than she’d have liked, if she were planning on being in charge of them. Stark was going to have fun herding them around town. She snickered to herself.

“What’s so funny?” Fandral asked.

“Nothing.”

“Lucy,” Thor sighed.

“Fine. I wasn’t going to _say_ anything, but your fly’s open.” She shrugged. “And your bootlaces are untied. And--”

“Will you stop that?” Thor asked. “Please?”

“I figured you were soused enough to appreciate the humor of a petty practical joke.” She flashed him a bright, false smile. “Guess not. Okay, here goes nothing.”

She reached up and carefully opened a hole in the ceiling above them. The debris curled around itself, twisting and solidifying into a spiral staircase. “Ta-da! Freedom. Go forth and kick some ass, assuming Iron Man ever locates the appropriate ass in need of kicking.”

“You’re not coming?”

“Pressing business in the South Pacific,” she explained airly, stepping sideways into a shadow.

“Thor?” Sif called from the street above.

“Sif! Are you well? Loki said that her powers had left you poorly.”

“Well enough. Are you injured?”

“No. What has happened?” he asked, clambering up the staircase. The Warriors Three followed him carefully, getting their bearings as they scrambled out of the hole.

“This is some distance from where we were,” Hogun observed.

“Aye. And the tunnel did not seem so long when we were sliding down it,” Volstagg muttered. “Something here is amiss.”

“Where’s Lucy?” Sif growled. “You didn’t let her leave, did you?”

“Let is a strong word,” Fandral volunteered.

“Your sister is an honorless cur sometimes, Thor,” she gritted.

“She said there was a change of plans?”

“A _lying_ honorless cur.”

Thor’s shoulders slumped, and his smile faltered. “It went poorly, then?”

“It went as well as it could have, though she thinks the oath she’s sworn to destroy that monster will get her farther than it will.” Sif shook her head. “But we have more pressing concerns at the moment. What enemy waylaid you?”

“We saw nothing,” Hogun said.

“Loki said the Man of Iron has joined in the fray?” Volstagg asked.

“There’s not a fray to speak of, that he would admit to. The only thing we know is that it’s not the work of a magician, and that’s only if one chooses to believe Lucy. Do you know where the trap that caught you was set?”

Volstagg pointed up the street. “Surely we can find the location again, friends?”

“It’s as good a place as any to start,” Fandral said. “Thor, perhaps we should summon your native comrades?”

“An excellent idea.”

*****

Lucy leaned back against a tree and stretched her legs out, wondering if she should call Coulson. Even drunk, Thor and the rest of them should be able to handle some jackass whose grand plan was getting everyone high, she thought. And Sif was perfectly sober. Still....

Her phone rang. She looked at it and shook her head.

“What now?” she muttered. She tapped the answer button. “Barton.”

“Hey, Jones. I need to talk to Sif.”

“I’m not with Sif. You want to talk to Sif, maybe get Coulson to set her up with a phone plan that covers other dimensions.”

“What do you mean you’re not with Sif?”

“I mean I’m not with Sif. I’d offer to say it in Spanish, but that would just come out as English again anyway.”

“Okay, uh...are you feeling all right?”

“Nope! But since you’re not calling for me, why don’t we just keep that between us, and you can tell Coulson to start tapping into security cameras and find Sif that way.”

He sighed heavily on the other end of the line. “Coulson’s busy. Where did you put the alien ambassador?”

“I left her in Philly with Thor and the gang. And Stark. Finding her shouldn’t be rocket science, Barton. Just punt it to Widow, if Coulson’s fucked off somewhere.”

“Tony’s in Philadelphia?”

“Uh, yeah? Has he not checked in yet? There’s some bullshit going down. I think he fell victim to a mummy’s curse. Maybe he disturbed a dead robot pharaoh’s tomb? He wasn’t real clear on how it happened. The rest of the town is pre-gaming or something. Seemed like the kind of thing you guys tend to keep tabs on, actually. Maybe you should call JARVIS and see what he’s currently trying to get Stark out of.”

“Where are _you_?” Clint asked.

“Snake Island.”

“Fine, don’t tell me,” he said, sighing again.

“That is actually a real place, Barton.”

“Yes, I know that, I just didn’t think even you’d be stupid enough to go there. Are you really on Snake Island?”

“Yes.”

“You’re _really_ rolling around in venomous snakes instead of in Philadelphia.”

“I’m not rolling in them. That would be rude. But it’s quieter than Philadelphia, at least. I mean, in case Coulson hasn’t clued you in, I have a big ugly mess to clean up, and the Nordic soap-opera is not a distraction I can afford. So Sif is going to hang out with Thor for a while, and Thor’s going to do what the fuck ever he normally does when he’s not ruining things for me, and I’m going to try to come up with a way to beat the armored tank division of deities. Feel free to not tell anybody, but most especially not Thor’s parents, about the part where Sif’s not watching me.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve got the sort of problems that you can’t just run away from, Jones,” Clint scolded.

“Pfft. Shows what you know. And it helps when I’ve got a metric ton of pit vipers to slow them down behind me.”

“Okay, point.”

“Damn straight it’s a point.”

“So long as I’ve got you on the phone, would you mind telling me why you felt the need to sabotage a fleet of SHIELD vehicles?”

Lucy pinched the bridge of her nose. “If I get accused of doing one more thing where I have no fucking clue what’s going on, I’m going to go do something just to break the streak. You dig?”

“Are you seriously suggesting that _someone else_ stuffed the fuel vents of an entire branch’s cars with spiders?”

“Yeah, actually. At this point, if I was mad enough at you guys to break all your toys, I’d have melted them into slag and then leveled your headquarters in a freak hurricane. Anything that needs a forensic mechanical inspection is too subtle to sit around and wait for.” A viper fell into her lap. She picked it up and tossed it away. It slithered past her, pausing only long enough to give her a dirty look. She stuck her tongue out at it, then immediately felt childish for having done so. She was, technically, a guest.

“So, uh, Tony’s loose in Philadelphia, probably in need of back-up but not requesting it. You’ve ditched Sif in the same location, along with Thor and his guys. There’s an attack by a party or parties unknown on the location in general--”

“It’s beginning to sound like haranguing me is a waste of valuable time in which you could be rousting Coulson.”

“We’re not done talking about those cars.”

“What is the fucking deal with you and those cars? Are you personally on the hook for them? I mean, is this coming out of your paycheck if you can’t pin it on me? Because if it is, why don’t you just sneak some of the spiders into some rich asshole’s lab and then use a number attached to someone who’s currently pissed at them to call in a tip about it?”

“Are you suggesting I frame Tony for this?”

“Well, I was actually suggesting you frame Richards for it, but Stark works too.” Lucy closed her eyes and let her head rest against the rough, fibrous trunk. “Or, shit, tell them I did it. I don’t care. Maybe I did. I’ve gotten drunk enough in the past few months that I might have thought cramming a car full of giant spiders was hilarious.”

“Then spiders were actually tiny, and I’m going to quote you on that in my report,” he warned.

“Sure, sure. That’s gonna sound real professional. ‘Investigation concluded that known supervillain “might have” vandalized vehicles while intoxicated. Subject concurred that “it sounds like something [I] would do” and also confessed to every other currently open case agent needs to close.’ That’ll get you out from under the wage-garnishment hammer for sure. Call me when you’re done cleaning up the City of Brotherly Shove, and I’ll sign off on it.” She hung up on him.

The waves lapped at the shore, and the night was calm. It was actually nice out, all things considered. Another lancehead fell on her. “Goddammit. Stupid snake.”

The viper glowered at her before curling up in her lap and making itself comfortable. She pulled out a flask and took a sip.

“I should fill a division’s worth of SHIELD cars with you guys, huh? Colonize some more islands with you or something, save you from going extinct in the event of some stray lightning bolt or douchebag with a box of matches.”

It flicked its tongue at her disinterestedly before resting its head on her knee, seeming content to ignore her so long as she kept being warm. She snorted and called Coulson, only to have it go straight to voicemail.

“Hey, Coulson. Jones here. On a scale of ‘officially annoyed but secretly amused’ to ‘swearing out a warrant for my immediate murder and sending it to those guys you’re only authorized to use in third-world countries,’ how upset would you be if I saved a species from the brink of extinction by moving half of them to that annoying little HYDRA base in the Baltic? Call me back!”

She tucked the phone into her pocket, dislodging a small snake that was trying to coil itself around her arm.

“Okay, guys, the thermal energy ain’t free. Who’s up for a brainstorming session about how we kill this damn sea monster?”


	41. Chapter 41

“I appreciate you meeting me here, Coulson,” Lucy said cheerfully, shading her eyes against the glare. Phil looked around and finally took a seat.

“The Café du Monde.” He frowned at the exposure of the location and glanced darkly from behind his sunglasses at the press of other patrons.

“If I can’t play tourist occasionally, life loses some of its pleasure,” Lucy explained, picking a beignet apart and slipping a small piece to the microraptor begging at her elbow. It seized the pastry and scampered off along the railing, its feathers ruffling in the breeze. Two smaller raptors waited in a nearby shrub, chattering noisily until they received their share.

“Is that even good for them?” Phil asked, looking pointedly at a large sign asking patrons not to feed the small dinosaurs.

“Probably not,” she answered, unperturbed.

“You know your brother is practically going out of his mind because of you.”

“I’m not unaware of that fact.” She took a sip of her coffee. “I think I may have a plan. For the sea scorpion, I mean. Not that I don’t have a plan for Thor, but I really don’t need anything from you for that plan, so feel free not to worry about it.”

Phil grimaced. “You know, you have such a bad track record with things like that that the moment you say something along the lines of ‘feel free not to worry about it,’ my adrenal gland automatically goes into overdrive.”

“As well it should. It’s been paying attention.” She sat back. “Cards on the table, Coulson. I’m going to try to kill this thing, but for what I need to do, I need an open area with nobody hanging around to get turned into collateral damage. Do you, or anyone else, have anything hiding out in Antarctica?”

“You’re asking me to disclose the location of secret SHIELD bases?”

“No, I’m just asking you to confirm that there’s nothing unofficially full of fragile, squishable human beings in a specific location. Or, if there _is_ something there, I guess I’m asking you to evacuate it in the next 48 hours.”

“Please do not melt Antarctica.”

“I’m not going to melt Antarctica.” Lucy made a face at him.

“ _Promise me_ you’re not going to melt Antarctica.”

“Just eat your beignet and listen to me for a minute,” she huffed. “I’m really, genuinely, absolutely going to try not to melt Antarctica. I shouldn’t melt Antarctica. _But_ this is probably going to get messy, and it’ll be far enough away from everybody’s official Antarctica stations that they shouldn’t be in trouble, but any unofficial Antarctica bases might get fucking trashed. So, it would be nice if there wasn’t anybody in them in case that does happen.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out, then. You find the answers on Ilha da Queimada?” he asked, jumping when a microraptor coasted down from the rafters and barely missed his ear.

“Did you really have to do this?” he demanded, gesturing at the knot of unlaunched raptors huddling in the awning. “At the very least, couldn’t you have gone with a less obnoxious variety of prehistoric lizard?”

“They’re not as bad as the pigeons were, Coulson,” she retorted, brushing the crumbs off her skirt. “And yes, I found the answers on Snake Island. The snakes were very eager to be of assistance.”

“The snakes came up with a workable plan?” Phil’s tone betrayed his surprise. He pursed his lips after a moment. “You want me to evacuate the South Pole based on a plan that a bunch of snakes came up with.”

“Well, no. Most of their ideas revolved around eating birds. I got the feeling that’s what most of their _lives_ revolve around. Not much to do on Snake Island besides be a snake, really.” She shrugged, and the tiny yellow viper coiled around her braid slithered forward and draped itself over her shoulder. Phil carefully edged back a few inches.

“You brought back a souvenir,” he observed.

“I brought back a few, actually. Amazing how many snakes can wind up colonizing a pair of cargo pants. This is the only one that didn’t get deported last night.”

“I see. And you started a colony of them in Australia because...?”

“Well, they were _trying_ to be helpful. And they don’t want to go extinct. And who’d notice another type of poisonous snake in Australia?”

“The Australians?” he asked. “Not to mention that it’s extremely difficult not to notice a new type of poisonous snake anywhere when it takes to riding giant flightless birds around. What were you thinking?”

“That I don’t live in Australia?” she retorted. “Plus they promised they’d only eat rabbits and keep to themselves.”

“And you believed them?” Phil demanded, rubbing his temples.

“Do I look like an idiot? Of course I didn...” She caught his look and cut herself off. “Of course I did?”

“You didn’t believe them, and they didn’t help you, but you did it anyway.”

“Okay, you know all the shit you guys have promised over the years? I didn’t believe most of that, either. Doesn’t mean I abdicate the right to be pissed off when what I knew was going to happen actually happens. Or that it’s my fault when it happens.”

Phil stared at her. “Yes, it does.”

“Says you.”

“Says any reasonable human being.”

“Magicians have a different definition of ‘reasonable.’” She smiled brightly at him. “So what wound up happening with Mole Guy? The news said you weren’t confirming he was in custody.”

“Mole Man,” Phil corrected. “He escaped. Something he probably would not have done had you stuck around to help.”

“Yes, but you see, _I don’t care_. Hell, even if I was playing for your side, I don’t think I could muster the energy to care about that dude. As far as realistic threats go, that dude was solidly weaksauce.”

“He managed to give Thor and the Warriors Three a bad day,” Phil sighed. “Care to tell me what your plan there is?”

“With Thor?” She drummed her fingers on the table. “Talk to him.”

“That’s a change of pace.”

“I may need you to kick him off the planet until after I take care of the sea scorpion if talking doesn’t work, though.”

“And there we go.” Phil shook his head. “I’m not kicking an alien dignitary and member of the Avengers off the planet at the request of a supervillain.”

“Look, that’s a last resort. This thing is going to be a god-fight. I’m pretty sure if he tries to interfere, he could actually get killed or seriously injured. You don’t want that to happen, Asgard doesn’t want that to happen, and I don’t fucking want that to happen.”

“Awful kind of you,” Phil groused.

“Look, I do like him. He’s annoying, and he doesn’t listen, and he seems to have some kind of weird death-wish for someone who’s immortal, and he won’t stay out of my face, but in spite of all that, I’d really prefer that nothing too bad happens to him. I might go so far as to say I’d really _strongly_ prefer that nothing too bad happens to him.”

“And sending him home ensures this?”

She sighed. “I’m going to talk to him and try to get him to agree to stay the fuck out of it. _If_ he tells me to go to hell, that he’s not sitting on the sidelines if it looks like it’s going badly, _then_ I would like you to ship him home until it’s over. I’m hoping I can get him to see reason, though.”

“What if he could help you?” Phil suggested.

“I’m not getting him killed over this,” Lucy said flatly.

“You’d pick him over the rest of the world?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” she snapped. “But I’m not dragging him into this. The odds of him being able to help versus the odds of him getting hurt and distracting me and getting me killed are fucking terrible, and I’m not going down that road. It doesn’t lead anywhere I’m interested in visiting again.”

“Interesting.”

“Shut up, Coulson.” She scowled at him, the effect ruined by an undignified shiver when the viper slipped down her shirt. She scooped it back out and tucked it firmly into her hair. “Will you help me out here or not?”

“I’ll put out the word on Antarctica. I’m not deporting an alien prince on your say-so.”

“It’s preventative deportation for his own protection.”

“It’s not happening.”

“It’s for his own good, and to prevent a civilization with superior weapons from getting mad at Earth in the event of his injury,” she pointed out. “You used to care about that, remember?”

“I have a great deal of faith in him not to get himself injured,” Phil said drily.

“You have a great deal of....Have you _met_ him?” She threw her hands in the air in frustration, and the glint of her ring caught the eye of one of the microraptors. It dove and latched onto her arm, provoking a stream of high-volume swearing and, Phil thought, a rather excessive amount of flailing. He pushed his chair back calmly and checked his watch as Lucy tried to get a firm grip on the reptile. Feathers swirled through the air, and people at adjacent tables scrambled away from them. She finally pried the raptor off her arm and tossed it back into the air. It flapped awkwardly back to a perch, its flight even clumsier due to several missing flight feathers. The staff did their best to ignore the entire event.

“Stupid dinosaur,” she muttered, rubbing her arm.

“Thor’s more reliable than you seem to think,” Phil scolded gently.

“Stupid human,” she grunted. The viper tried to curl around her ear, and she gave up and deposited it in her purse.

“Do not set that thing loose in this city,” Phil warned firmly. “They’ve had enough ecological disasters for one century.”

“Re-evaluate your decision about Thor, and I’ll think about it.”

“I’m not deporting him. I’d sooner deport you than him.”

“And then what, call Strange in to deal with the scorpion?” Lucy challenged.

“If I have to,” he said evenly. She rolled her eyes.

“If he was willing or able to do it, he’d had said yes already,” she snorted.

“You knew we’d asked him?”

“Here’s the thing, Coulson. I don’t _like_ SHIELD. I don’t have a really high opinion of the shit you people pull on the regular. But I don’t think you’re absolutely and completely fucking incompetent, most of the time, and if you didn’t go running to Strange with this right out of the gate, I’d be a bit shocked. What’s the point of having a semi-tame magician if you’re not going to badger him about all kinds of stupid bullshit, right? I mean, you badger me with all kinds of stupid bullshit, and our relationship consists of me picking up the phone every so often. Strange is actually on the payroll. That he didn’t take care of it when you told him about it means that he can’t or won’t, right? So you’re not going to beam me off-planet and have him do it.” She finished her coffee. “If it’s any consolation, it’s because he can’t. God-fight and all. There are rules.” She tilted her chair back and casually flipped off a table of tourists who were gawking too openly.

“That’s not much of a consolation, no. Can you please stop drawing so much attention to yourself?”

“I’ve got a snake in my hair, I just got jumped by a dinosaur, and I’m obviously talking to a g-man. That ship has sailed.”

“You could turn us invisible if you wanted,” he said, suddenly sounding tired.

“Then we’d have people trying to sit on us for half an hour.” She flexed her hands. “Look, Coulson. I’m not asking for much here. Just try to work with me. Just this once. After I kill this thing, and the world is safe from the threat of impending ocean-based climate-fucked doom, we can go back to normal.”

“Would this be the normal where you sulk on an island for a year because your brother won’t let you commit crimes, or the normal where you rob banks and hide national monuments and get into slap-fights with HYDRA over bounced paychecks?”

“Fuck if I know yet.” She rubbed her eyes. “How ‘bout the normal where I can take a fucking day off every so often without a porch covered in Vikings and three phone calls from NOAA and you don’t hear my name more than once a month.”

“Why is NOAA calling you?”

“I don’t know. Something about weaponized dolphins? Basically the same reason your boy was calling me about spiders in your company cars. ‘Weird shit’s going down, let’s all tie up the magician’s line and leave stupid voicemails!’ Speaking of which, were they Mazdas? Because if they were Mazdas, according to the _company recall_ y’all ignored, the spiders just do that all by themselves. No magical intervention necessary.”

“I do not recall offhand the make or model of the vehicles in question, and I’m sorry Barton bothered you over it.”

“ _Thank_ you.”

“Normally we just attribute it to you without requiring a follow-up.”

Lucy scowled at him. “Oh my god, I fucking hate you people sometimes.”

Phil shrugged, his face a picture of indifference. “When are you going to talk to Thor?”

“Tonight. Text me when the great white wasteland is clear, and I’ll get this show on the road.”

“Just be careful.”

“I live here, too, Coulson. I’m going to do my level best to do this with a minimum of smashing,” she promised. “Look me up after I finish saving the world. Maybe I’ll let you buy me a beer. No autographs, though. I want to preserve my sorcerous mystique.”

Phil snorted. “ _If_ you pull this off, I will consider possibly buying you a coffee.”

Lucy pushed a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. “For what it’s worth--and I will deny ever saying this if you refer to it in the future--I _am_ sorry this has turned into such a pain in the ass for you.”

“I’m sorry this has turned into such a pain in the ass for me, too,” he said, one corner of his mouth twitching up slightly.

“Oh, shit, was that _a smile_? Is that how you smile? Wow. Never joking with you again, Coulson.”

“Good day, Jones,” he sighed, shaking his head and getting up. “Try not to get us all killed.”

“That’s the goal. Oh, before you go? Stay the fuck out of Selvig’s lab for the next month?”

“What? Why?”

“Dunno, didn’t look too close. Just keep your distance, okay?”

Phil tilted his head and then nodded after a moment. She waved him off, then dashed after the tiny viper as it slithered across the terrace and into a bush.


	42. Chapter 42

Lucy paced and lit a new cigarette off the embers of her last one. Thor was...not late. But not early, as she’d thought he’d be, and it irritated her. She’d half-expected him to already be waiting when she’d arrived an hour ago. _Maybe_ , she thought darkly, _he’s not coming at all. That would be just my fucking luck, to have that blond bastard decide he doesn’t want to talk when I finally need to talk to him. Prick._

She rubbed her arm and kicked a stone into the scrub on the other side of the empty, pock-marked parking lot. The crumbling storefronts in front of her wavered for a moment, blurring into a vision of a ziggurat decorating with ornate stone skulls and murals of war and sacrifice. The tiny viper slithered down her collar and wriggled into her breast pocket. She’d decided to call the little snake Lamia, and the snake had elected to ignore her decision. Lucy stopped, checked her phone, and resumed pacing. Still not technically _late,_ but still no sign of him, either.

Maybe he’d finally lost interest. Maybe she’d finally convinced him, or frustrated him enough that he’d given up. She scowled at the thought and stuffed her hands in her pockets. _Good. Who needs him hanging around, anyway? Being on my own is easier._

The plastic bag full of ginger candy crinkled against her knuckles, and she deflated a little. Stupid Coulson and his stupid questions. “You’d pick him over the rest of the world?” She ran her fingers through her hair and sighed. Of course she wouldn’t pick one annoying, dopey obstacle of an alien over the rest of the fucking planet. Over _her_ planet. Over her _future_. 

Maybe. 

Most of the time. 

She was pretty sure.

Lucy snorted to herself. She was just as big an idiot as he was, sometimes. He kept trying to drag her back into the fold in spite of the sane option being to run in the opposite direction with all due speed. She, in turn, had let him get under her skin and eat a hole precisely the size of a hammer right through her armor. And now, if it came down to it, yes, she’d probably do something incalculably, monumentally stupid if it looked like he was genuinely in danger. She didn’t have it in her to risk a loved one. She never had.

“Could this be any more of a clusterfuck?” she muttered. Lucy retrieved the snake from her pocket and pulled her hair back, wrapping the snake around the ponytail. The viper hissed unhappily and hugged close to her skin to avoid the chill of the evening air. It tickled, and she shivered. “Oh my god, could you stop that for one second?”

She warmed the air around her until the snake stopped fidgeting and, for good measure, burned a piece of litter to ash as it blew past. She looked petulantly around the deserted stripmall and sat down on a parking barrier.

“Behold, the fruit of my poor judgment,” she grunted, taking a drag. She exhaled the smoke slowly, savoring it for a few extra seconds while she tried to collect herself. Before Thor, she’d managed to keep anyone who was really strong enough to harm her at arm’s length. She checked her phone again. He was officially late. “People who see a scheduled meeting with someone who can set them on fire at a distance as a fucking _suggestion_.”

_Calm down. He’s going to show up eventually, and then he’s going to know he got the upper hand by being late, and that won’t do at all,_ she told herself. She got back up and stalked across the asphalt. The boarded-up doors and gaping blacked-out windows shimmered again, and she took a deep breath and calmed herself. It was just a matter of making things like _so_ instead of as they _were_ , and then....Lucy flexed her fingers, and everything snapped into place. The temple she’d seen rose gracefully from the blacktop, now real and solid. She ran her hands along the edge of a carving. It was as sharp and clear as if it had been finished days ago. She wondered if some poor bastard somewhere else was having visions of a decaying stripmall where a ziggurat was supposed to be, then decided she didn’t particularly care and flopped down on the not-particularly-comfortable steps. She’d give it another five minutes, tops, and then she was gone like the wind.

Her phone buzzed, and she glanced at it. A text from Barton reading, “Coulson is making me apologize for blaming the spiders in the cars on you.”

She rolled her eyes and tapped back, “Tell Coulson thank you for making you apologize.”

Her phone buzzed again, and she shook her head. Screw it. She was in no mood to wait on alien gods or get into text-fights with snarky assassins. Her phone rang.

“ _What_?” she snapped.

“I need you to not open the picture I just sent you,” Clint blurted.

His panicked tone made her head hurt. She’d heard that tone before. She pursed her lips. “Did you text me your dick?”

“Not on purpose!”

“I have a picture of your _dick_ on my _phone_.”

“I didn’t mean to send it to you! I was trying to send it to--”

“I need you to not finish that statement,” she interrupted. “I really, really need you to just _not_. I mean, good for you, having somebody to text pictures of your dick to. Or at. I also don’t need to hear _why_ you were trying to text your penis to the person whose identity I don’t wish to know.”

“So you’re just going to delete it? We’re good?” he asked nervously.

“I’m going to burn this fucking phone is what I’m going to do.”

“Thank you.”

“And I’m not even going to tell Fury you’re texting people top secret documents.”

“Uh, I don’t think that’s considered top secret.”

“But.”

“Yeah?” he sighed.

“If there’s a repeat of this? You are going to live a life plagued by those giant fuck-off spiders that eat birds,” she said firmly. “Giant fuck-off bird-eating spiders will _haunt_ you.”

“That...sounds fair.” He paused. “Promise you’re not going to peek? Like, wizard-promise?”

“Barton, I assure you, on all the arcane powers at my disposal, if I ever get some weird and abstract urge to look at dicks, I have an entire internet full of anonymous dicks to peruse and do not need to resort to, as you put it, peeking.”

“Now you’re just coming across as insulting.”

“If you don’t have a dick and you don’t have any particular sexual interest in dicks, there’s not really a huge point in looking at dicks. You are aware of that, right?”

“Yeah, but you make it sound like my dick would be particularly unappealing.”

Lucy rubbed her forehead. Her life was officially out of control. “Okay, do you have the Black Widow’s number? Or Wasp’s extension? Maybe just transfer me to Hill? Because if I’m going to spend any more time talking to people I don’t like about their genitals, I’d really prefer it at least be about genitals that I have a concrete interest in.”

“Or instead of getting murdered in my sleep for truly embarrassing reasons, I could just hang up and not bother you again?” he offered.

“That’s a much better idea, Barton.” She hung up and deleted the picture he’d sent her, shaking her head. After a moment, she chuckled, pulled up an invoicing app she’d bought on a whim, and sent Coulson a bill for the conversation. If she was getting stood up in a ghost town, at least she wasn’t going to be the only one feeling humiliated and put upon by life. Let the assassin explain why his supervisor was getting a five-figure bill from a supervillain for a conversation about his penis.

Lucy stubbed out her cigarette on the asphalt and rubbed her forehead. She wasn’t going to wait around all night like an asshole, but she wasn’t in a particularly big hurry to get to Antarctica, either. And she couldn’t take the snake with her, even if she was.

“Think you can stay out of trouble if I drop you off somewhere?” she asked the viper, scratching her gently under her pit organs. The snake seemed to consider it for a moment before biting her firmly, leaving a dribble of venom smeared on her finger. “Okay, we’ve firmly established that that doesn’t work, because I'm fang-proof, and also we’ve talked about how biting because you’re not getting your way is unacceptable, you little brat.”

She wiped her hand on a stray receipt. “Besides, you don’t really want to go to the south pole. It’s cold, and you’re a baby about cold weather. If I get too fucked up to keep you warm, you’re going to be a snakesicle in very short order. Which is actually a very distinct possibility, because I really don’t know if this is going to work.”

Lucy sighed and hauled herself to her feet. If Thor _had_ finally taken the hint and fucked off for good, that made things easier. No arguing with him. No arguing with Coulson about him. No worrying that he’d go back on any agreement and come barreling in to fuck everything up at the last minute. She gnawed on her inner cheek. Easier was good. Especially when she was really diving right into the deep end. Easier was what she wanted. Hell, easier was what she _needed_. Everything wrapped up nice and neat and out of the way. She groaned, kicked another rock, and started pacing again. She’d never been any good at talking herself out of sulking, and now was not a miraculous deviation from the norm.

“Time to stop stalling and get to work, huh?” she muttered, rubbing the snake’s nose. She snapped her fingers, turning the cigarette butts she’d left behind to ash, and took a deep breath. _Snake Island, here I come_.

The wind picked up, and an electric charge crept through the atmosphere. Lucy snorted and lit another cigarette. He was coming after all, and she could hardly pretend she didn’t know it at this point. Mjolnir was putting off enough power to light Vegas for a week. She held up a hand to shield her eyes from the wind and bitterly resented the way the knot in her stomach was loosening. _Fucking treacherous bullshit emotions_ , she thought.

Thor landed with a crack of lightning and a final swirl of old air, his cape billowing around him.

“You’re late,” she called, leaning back against the one of the murals.

“You waited,” he called back. He beamed at her. “I did not think you would. My apologies for the delay, but there was an emergency that required all of us to address.” His gaze took in the pyramid behind her. “I see you’ve kept yourself occupied.”

“It’s a vast improvement over the original architecture,” Lucy assured him. She tossed him the packet of candies. “For Sif. A peace offering.”

He frowned at it. “Sweetmeats?”

“A specific sort. They help with motion sickness.”

“You have done her a great wrong by slipping away from her like this,” Thor sighed, frowning. “She is honor-bound to defend you.”

The spark of an idea caught her. “Yes, well, I’m honor-bound to deal with my, uh, _foe_ on my own. Which puts both of you fairly well out of it, though I do appreciate how pushy everybody’s been about this.”

“You know, I can tell when you’re lying,” he scolded.

“Oh?” She grimaced. So much for that bit of inspiration. “What gave me away?”

“You always lie,” he said, shrugging.

“Jackass.”

“And you’d have said something before now if it were the case,” he added.

“I might not have thought it was important,” she pointed out. “I mean, if I’d realized how seriously you were all going to take this thing with the sea scorpion, I’d have said something right off the bat and saved everybody a lot of trouble.”

“I know you do not mean it, but you insult Sif’s prowess as a warrior by not trusting her to protect you.” He made his way carefully across the lot to join her.

“Which is a shame, yes, and I apologize. But, here’s the thing--I really need to have zero Asgardians underfoot for this whole thing. You guys get in the way. And you can’t help, here. This isn’t a normal, stand-up fight with like, a dragon or an army or a killer robot that shoots flames out of its face. And the last thing I need is for you to get in the way and start a huge diplomatic thing with your family. I need to be able to concentrate without you hanging around and annoying me.”

“Are you certain you’re not simply afraid that I’ll be injured in the battle?” Thor asked quietly. “Concern for one’s comrades is a normal feeling for a warrior to experience.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, of course I’m certain. Couldn’t care less. It’s purely a pragmatic thing. And you’re not a comrade.” She glared at him. “There is no comradery here. None.”

“Coulson seemed to think that you care too deeply to allow me to come to harm,” Thor said solemnly.

“That fucking narc,” Lucy hissed. Thor laughed softly, and she shot him a poisonous look. “Bottom line, Thor, is that I need you to stay out of it. It doesn’t fucking matter _why_ I need you to stay out of it. If you can’t promise not to come blundering onto the field, we’re going to have a problem.”

“You are certain that this is something you must face on your own, in spite of the danger?” he asked. “Know that I would be honored to fight alongside you once again.”

“No, you wouldn’t, and yes, I am.” She sighed and crushed a tiny flicker of guilt.

“Our mother is most intent on you coming out of this intact. She will not be forgiving if I leave you to face this doom alone.”

“It’s non-negotiable. Stop trying to negotiate it.” She looked up at the night sky. _I always lie, huh?_ She considered him for a long moment, then put her hand on his shoulder. “If something happened to you because of this, I could never forgive myself.”

He stopped, his brows furrowing and his blue eyes searching. She stifled a bubble of mad laughter, then an acid surge of perverse satisfaction at his discomfort. _Fine, yes, I care about you, and now we’re both completely screwed. Neither one of us are ever going to make a good decision again, and everything’s fucked. Are you happy now?_

“Why must you always use words as if they were weapons?” he sighed finally, pulling her into a tight hug.

“It’s less illegal than stabbing people.” She hugged him back. “Let’s not make a habit of this, okay?”

“Would it truly be so terrible if we did?” he rumbled.

“Cities would fall, and the oceans would burn,” she grunted.

“They would not.”

“Which one of us has the gift of prophecy?” She saw a tiny yellow tail disappear under his cloak. “Oh, shit. Hold still. My snake got on you.”

He froze obediently. “You have a serpent with you?”

“She was in my hair. I guess she likes you better. Hang on.” Lucy muttered a few obscenities under her breath as she pawed at his armor. “I’m not above just vaporizing you, you stupid fucking thing.”

“Why did you have a serpent in your hair?”

“There comes a certain point at which it’s better to stop asking questions, Thor. I think we’ve reached that point,” she said tightly. She grabbed the viper by its tail and retrieved it.

“It is venomous?”

“Oh, yes.” Lucy held the snake up. “See?”

“Indeed. It is a most handsome worm.” Thor grimaced at her. “If I agree to this, will you swear to be careful? To take no unnecessary risks?”

“Insofar as it’s possible to be careful under the circumstances, yes. I’m not in a big hurry to get kicked to the moon by a primordial monster, Thor. Not to mention that the planet’s kind of at risk if I get myself killed doing something stupid.” She stuffed the snake in a pocket over its protests. “And I do appreciate you being so understanding about the whole thing.”

“I said ‘if’,” he warned.

“And I agreed to your terms,” she retorted brightly. “No take-backs.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means no weaseling out of it. You take Sif and the Three Musketeers--”

“The Warriors Three,” he corrected sternly.

“--and keep everybody out of the possible blast radius. In return, I do my level best to not lose to a bastard from beyond time itself.” She stuck out her hand. “Shake on it?”

His shoulders slumped a little. “Things don’t have to be so difficult between us.”

“You’re a difficult person.” She shook her head. “And you want difficult things.”

“I’m not trying to be.”

“Intent and effect are often not the same thing. But I suppose we’ll have time to discuss it in greater depth later.”

“I intend to treat that as a promise. And your serpent is escaping again,” he said apologetically.

“Goddammit. That’s it.” She snapped her fingers, and the viper blinked into a garter snake. “Here. Take care of her until I get back.”

“I’m ill-equipped to care for a venomous beast,” he protested.

“She’s not anymore. I’ll fix her once I’m done with this. For the time being, just make sure Pym or somebody who knows what they’re doing with animals looks after her. And,” she paused and shifted uncomfortably, “take care of yourself. Or something. I don’t know. Fuck it.”

He smiled at her. “I will. Luck in the battle.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She stepped into the deeper gloom and vanished.


	43. Chapter 43

Lucy stretched out her arms and spread her fingers, the sharp sting of the cold wind crackling across her flesh as it howled around her. Between the ice on her skin, the fire in her veins, and the night in her eyes, she felt more like a primal force than a human being. She could feel the coil and surge of the molten earth far below like it was her own heartbeat, and the katabatic wind scouring the continent was her breath. _This place was a good choice_ , she thought.

She needed to play to her strengths, both innate and borrowed, and get the scorpion out of its element. Onto land, into the cold, away from anything that would it let maneuver; she needed it frost-burned and sluggish and struggling under the weight of its own exoskeleton. The idea of breaking its armor along fracture points where flexibility had been sacrificed for hardness was simple in theory and difficult in execution. For all its size, it was still fast. She concentrated and raised scorch marks in the necessary patterns on the ice under her. Traps, pitfalls, channels, and amplifiers. She’d be ready soon. Lucy sighed and rubbed her arm, the old break stinging with an unusual ferocity.

*****

“I cannot believe you agreed to this,” Sif grunted. She leaned on the balcony and looked out over the city. The snarled traffic on the streets below looked like a column of ants. Thor spread his hands helplessly.

“We cannot do more than chase after her, Sif. Perhaps if we still had Amora’s assistance, there might have been some way to make her see reason, but as it stands, the task is simply not possible.”

“What of the Midgardian sorcerer? Strange?” she protested. “Can your comrades not persuade him to help?”

“They have entreated him, and he cannot.” Thor pushed his hair out of his face. “It is difficult, I know, but there is not much to be done besides endure it.”

“And chastise her roundly when she returns,” Fandral added, handing her the bag of ginger candy.

Sif hefted it and shot Volstagg and Hogun measuring looks. “You’ve all found something to keep you occupied, at least.”

“It has a pleasing sharpness,” Volstagg offered. Hogun stopped chewing and pretended to study a map.

“Don’t begrudge us a share in the spoils, Sif,” Fandral laughed, elbowing her gently. “I’m sure there’s more where that came from. You can levy a steady supply as damages against your reputation when Loki gets back.”

She shook her head but took a piece from the bag and handed it back to him. “You’re confident that she’ll be back. I’m not. She should not have been left to her own devices in this. When did she ever leave us to fight for ourselves?”

“Less than a fortnight ago?” Volstagg said, counting silently on his fingers.

“Before Thor’s exile, then,” Sif amended. “Besides which, I do not believe that poor excuse for an opponent much counts in this score.”

“Things are different now, Sif,” Thor sighed. “I like it no more than you do, but for the time being, there is little alternative.”

“And later?” she asked sourly.

“Later, we will _make_ an alternative.” He shook his head. “There has to be a way to end this stalemate. We will find one.”

“She seems infinitely better behaved in Frigga’s presence, at least,” Sif mused. “Perhaps she and Jane could join us in Asgard for a while.”

Thor gave her a small smile and leaned back against the railing. He was more worried than he wished to admit. Lucy had not seemed quite herself when he had spoken to her. Ordinarily, he did not see her having entrusted him with one of her pets. Bruce and a very jittery woman he’d never met before were busy trying to debrief a doctor who had been collected from the west coast, claimed to have spent the last several years as an octopus, and was persistently demanding to be changed back. Coulson had identified her immediately, but he’d dodged Thor’s questions about Lucy’s involvement. He’d even contacted her accountant, who had been as helpful and solicitous as always, and had reassured him sympathetically and without conviction that Lucy knew what she was doing and was practically indestructible most of the time. He sighed. Those who knew her better than he did and those who had known her longer than he had were clearly less than convinced that this would go well. How could he have more confidence than they did?

He looked up to find Sif watching him carefully.

“You do not believe your own words,” she said quietly.

“I believe that she has found a way to defeat her enemies without assistance in the time before we found her,” he said slowly.

“Then I suppose we must trust that she will continue to do so now.” Sif frowned, and he covered her hand with his and squeezed.

“Was there ever a difficulty Loki could not discover a way out of, given time to think?”

Sif shot him a sharp glare, and he looked away. Only the once. But that had been enough, hadn’t it? She wouldn’t repeat her mistake. He had to believe that.

*****

“I’m sorry, Bruce, but Dr. Thomas is simply not a high priority right now,” Phil sighed. He covered one ear with his free hand and concentrated on the voice coming from his phone as the already-frenetic activity around him increased. “We’re in the middle of an emergency evac here.”

Clint appeared at his elbow. “Sir?”

“I have to go. Feel free to rope Jan or Tony into helping you if she’s getting overly aggressive. Good luck.” He hung up. “Clint?”

“Are we officially aware of the yeti situation?” he asked.

Phil closed his eyes. “Define ‘the yeti situation’.”

“That would be the situation where we have roughly three dozen yeti queued up and awaiting transport out of the area.”

“Yeti,” Phil repeated.

Clint cleared his throat. “Their uniforms have a Swedish flag patch on the right shoulder. If that, um, clarifies things. At all.”

“In that case, I can’t see any reason not to route them to the nearest Sweden-affiliated base. Insignias are there for a reason.”

“So we’re passing the buck on this one?”

“And blaming the magician, yes.”

“Okay, then. I’ll send it along.”

“Thank you, Barton.” Phil rubbed his temples and muttered, “Yeti.”


	44. Chapter 44

Lucy flattened herself against the scorpion’s carapace and reflected that this was probably not been the best idea she’d ever had. Its stinger scraped up along its armor, trying to dislodge her, and she dodged to the side and dug her fingers into another joint between the scutes. It couldn’t see or feel her, and the cold was making it clumsy. It was still damnably fast and strong, though, and she barely dropped off its back in time to avoid the snapping claw sweeping over the area its stinger couldn’t reach. She hit the ground and rolled, darted out of reach, and lifted a spike of ice out of the ground directly underneath it. Instead of being flipped over, it latched on and rippled down the sheer surface, twisting and flailing when it almost lost its balance.

“Fuck fuck fuck,” she snarled to herself. 

She had yet to so much as scratch it. All of her strikes had bounced off harmlessly, failing to hit the correct trajectory to crack the armor along its natural fault lines or punch through the tough chitin joining the plates together. She needed a better position, something that was easier said than done. She broke into a run, and it galloped after her, its legs sliding stiffly over the cold scree. When it was close enough not to react in time but far enough away to still be at a safe distance, she repeated the trick with the jutting ice, then teleported directly to the side of the spire. She narrowly dodged a blow from its hindmost paddle and sent a gout of superheated plasma at a patch of ventral armor, concentrating and shaping the flame like a blowtorch. The scorpion shrieked and jabbed at her with two of its forelimbs, and a spine opened a long slash across her left calf as it whistled past.

Lucy staggered, gritting her teeth in pain, and ducked back out from under the beast as it thrashed. The plate had cracked, at least, and hemolymph was beginning to ooze from the split. It froze almost as soon as it was clear of the scorpion’s body.

“Blood for blood, you son of a bitch,” she muttered, clutching her leg. 

It bucked and shrieked again, this time in anger, and charged her. There was no avoiding its legs this time, not with her calf opened up, and she jumped at the last second, grabbing the base of its tail and shimmying up toward the stinger. The sea scorpion roared and flexed, and she clung harder. She concentrated and froze the last foot of the spine until it was too brittle to flex when it finally flung her to the ground. She rolled and came up on her feet, favoring her injured leg, and the tip of the spine shattered with a crack. Her arm burned, and she thought for a brief, mad moment that she’d gotten hit with a sliver of the stinger.

“I don’t need this right now,” she hissed to herself. “Come on, _focus_.”

The sea scorpion writhed and screamed, its eyes glittering in rage and pain. Lucy sent a spark of power through one of the traps she’d previously set, and it sent a shockwave up through the beast’s body, rocking it back onto its paddles. It floundered for a second before righting itself and whirling on what it assumed was a new enemy. She seized the opportunity and scrambled back onto its carapace.

She misjudged the distance and wound up dangling from its side, and she kicked at its knees in an attempt to get further up to a position of relative safety.

“Fuuuuuuck,” she groaned. The jagged remnant of the stinger slashed past her, and she got herself on top of the scorpion with one last frantic push.

“I’m going to fucking kill you if it’s the last fucking thing I do, I swear to fucking god,” she panted. 

Her fingers slipped in the trail of hemolymph and venom the broken stinger had left on its chitin, and she rolled forward, trying for better purchase right behind its eyes. It snapped at her with its barbed claws, and she pushed back out of range. She dug her fingers in along the edge of a scute and focused, feeling the point at which the chitin ran out of give and started to break. She pushed all of her energy through it, and it burst into slivers under her hands. The scorpion’s scream was barely in the range of her hearing, and she felt it more than heard it, a terrible throbbing pressure against her eardrums. It twisted and flexed, curling desperately at the source of its pain. Lucy dove away from its claws only to find herself directly in the path of the hollow shards of the stinger.

She stared for perhaps a moment at the chitin punching a hole through her belly before it slid out and coiled back for another strike. Time seemed to stop as she blinked at the rime of ice across her skin and the boiling red of blood ready to spill.

“Oh,” she sighed.

She shoved a fist in the gaping wound and reached into the scorpion’s broken scute with the other hand, and everything hit her at once. Pain and panic and despair and a well of rage deeper than she’d known she had coursed through her, and her arm throbbed white-hot. She glanced at it and started laughing when she saw that the scar from Huītzilopōchtli’s bite glowing like a brand and burning through the sleeve of her jacket.

“You utter prick,” she gasped. _Of course he doesn’t want to give up being the sun_ , she thought. _Of fucking_ course _he doesn’t_.

The scorpion bucked again, and she slid further toward the head. Its claws seized on the sole of one of her boots, and she dug into its back, gritted her teeth, and pulled her hand free of the hole in her belly. Her whole arm was ablaze now, and she had to shut her eyes against the white flame. Her blood was like magma as it slopped across the scorpion’s back, and it roared when it reached its hindmost eyes. Everything stopped in the space of a heartbeat when she plunged her hand into its exposed flesh. She gathered everything she had left and kept pushing, shoving in and in and in until the whole of the scorpion’s body was transmuting into flame and plasma from her touch. _Three gods versus two, motherfucker. You lose_.

The scorpion disintegrated into an eye-searing ball of incandescent light, vaporizing everything within five miles.

*****

Lucy coughed and opened her eyes, squinting against the light. A face blotted out the sun after a second, and she blinked a few times before she was able to make it out. “Rabbit?”

“Way to make an entrance, Lucha.”

“How the fuck did I get _here_?” she grunted, pushing herself up on one elbow and trying to survey the damage. 

Her arm looked normal again, as did her stomach. Her clothes were charred flakes coated liberally with her own blood and the thick brown sludge from the scorpion’s veins, but the skin underneath them was whole. She was halfway up a hill within spitting distance of Rabbit’s papaya tree. By all rights, she should have been bargaining with the ferryman on the other side of the river.

Rabbit’s ears perked forward, and he pointed straight up. Her eyes followed to the crackling, flickering, tattered hole in the sky.

“That was _me_?”

“That was you.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah, you can say that again. And maybe get on fixing it? It’s getting bigger, and I’m not real keen on getting turned inside out and sucked back into the land of the living.”

“Fuck.” Lucy pushed her hair out of her face, stopped, and cringed. “Fuuuuuck.”

“What?”

“Scorpion blood. In my hair.” She looked at her pants and wiped her hands on the grass instead.

“Yeah, I think you’re maybe a little past worrying about how you look right now.”

“Thanks, Rabbit.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who decided to fry a god from the inside out.” He jerked a thumb at the hole. “You gonna fix that or what?”

“Yeah, yeah.” She thought for a second. “I’m going to need a staple gun. And I don’t suppose you’ve seen Frog hanging around anywhere?”

Rabbit crossed his arms and laid his ears back. “This is just going to be you all over, isn’t it?”

“Already is, Rabbit, already is.” She hauled herself to her feet with a groan and unkinked her back. She felt remarkably good for someone who’d just parboiled herself, and remarkably lousy for any other circumstance. She looked at the hole she’d torn through the sky again and sighed. This was not going to be fun.

“You gonna stick around this time, Lucha?” He dropped back to all fours and retreated a few paces.

“I don’t know.” She was tired down to her bones. She was hungry. She wanted to sleep. She didn’t want to think about what condition her body was going to be in when she got back to it. She rubbed her eyes. “Maybe. We’ll see, I guess. Anyway, come on, Rabbit. Frog? Have you seen her?”

“Yeah, she should be back at the burrow, hanging out with Armadillo. Come on, let’s go get ‘em.” He hopped off, and she fell into step behind him.

_Fucking hell,_ she thought, cracking her neck. _This is not how I expected this to go._

*****

Thor stared at the dead screen, his face pale. Tony coughed and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Look, buddy, it’s long-range surveillance equipment in an incredibly harsh environment. They fail for no reason all the time. I’m sure everything’s fine--”

“I cannot feel her presence any longer,” Thor told him quietly.

“Oh. Um...oh.” Tony lapsed into silence. “I’m sorry.”

“I should not have let her go alone,” Thor murmured, shaking his head.

Natasha looked at him sharply, her brows furrowing. “Could you have survived that?”

“Pardon?” he asked, looking almost through her.

“Could you have survived that? The blast that knocked out our observation units?”

“I...” He sighed heavily and shook his head.

“Then she wouldn’t have done it,” she said firmly, “and, seeing as I’m sure it was necessary, everything that led up to it would have been for nothing. She knew what she was doing, Thor. This isn’t on you.”

“Thank you, friend Natasha.” He rubbed his eyes and stood.

“Thor?” Coulson asked, his eyes snapping from the data feed on his monitor to the Asgardian.

“I think I would like to be alone for the time being, son of Coul,” he rumbled. Coulson hesitated for a second, then nodded. “Thank you.”


	45. Chapter 45

Thor crossed his arms over his knees and rested his forehead on them. The surf lapping against the sand and the plaintive cries of seagulls had been a welcome change from the noise of the city, but their monotony was lulling him into a sleep he desperately wished to avoid.

“Any idea how long we’re going to be out here, buddy?” Tony asked, shading his eyes against the sun. “It’s been almost a week now.”

“However long it takes,” Thor sighed, looking up. “I appreciate your company, but I also appreciate that you have responsibilities to your fellows. I would not hold it against you if you feel you’ve let them go too long.”

Tony gave him a sympathetic look before shaking his head. “I don’t have to be anywhere just yet. Why don’t you try to get some rest?” He jerked his head back toward the dim glow of the hotel lights in the distance. “I can keep watch on my own for a few hours.”

“Thank you for the offer, but...I do not care for my dreams. I would prefer to remain here. And awake.”

“You, uh, want to talk about it?” 

Thor rubbed his face. “I could not stop Loki’s fall from the bridge, friend Tony. But I could have stopped the events which led to it, and I could have stopped her when she went to face the beast alone. My dreams are a confusion.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think you could have stopped her. You should have a talk with Strange sometime.”

“I have. It is why we’re here,” Thor sighed. “She once told me of a dream she had. The good doctor said it might be of significance.”

“You mean like a prophecy? We’re out here on this beach because your sister had a prophetic dream?” Tony asked, puffing out his cheeks. “I thought this was just like some kind of Asgardian mourning ritual. If I’d know that, I’d have brought bigger guns.”

Thor frowned at him. “She did not dream of war or destruction, my friend.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not coming,” Tony pointed out. “Your sister was kind of a trouble-magnet. I’d just like to be prepared.”

“And I wish friend Jan had been willing to loan us the bird,” Thor sighed. “We must, it would seem, accustom ourselves to disappointment.”

“Your sister hated that bird, you know.”

“Aye, but the bird seems to have developed a certain sense of when the occult is occurring. It would be good to have forewarning.”

“I’m pretty sure if Jones had a prophetic dream about something that was going to happen after she wasn’t around to take care of it anymore, we’re not going to need a magic Geiger counter,” Tony said after a few minutes. “I think--I think it’s probably going to be pretty obvious. Can I ask you something?”

“If you can accept that I may not be able to answer,” Thor rumbled.

“Um...”

Thor shrugged. “I have had occasion to learn that grief is not a rational thing, my friend. It does not lend itself to a logical accounting at all times.”

“Oh.” Tony blinked. “No, you’re right, it doesn’t. But my question was actually about why it’s just you out here. Where’s Sif and the Three Amigos?”

“With Jane. After what happened with Selvig, she could hardly abandon her work to accompany me here, and I did not wish to leave her without protection.”

“I really wish Fury hadn’t cut us out of the loop on that. Did she tell you what exactly happened?”

“She did not know,” Thor said, “and she found it difficult to speculate based on her own tasks. She is brave, friend Tony, but she was most concerned for her friend. I believe she also wishes Director Fury to be more forthcoming with details.”

“You think it might have anything to do with whatever it is we’re waiting for here?” Tony asked, running his hands through his hair.

“It may, but there is simply no way of knowing. Loki did not provide much detail.”

“How are your parents holding up? I know they didn’t spend much time with her, but they seemed pretty...taken with her. Coulson said,” he supplied quickly. Thor raised his eyebrows. “To Fury. I _may_ have just happened to overhear them. On accident.”

“An accident. Of course.”

“It really was,” Tony protested. “After a fashion.”

“I must confess that I have yet to tell them.” Thor shook his head, and his eyes swept over the water. “It seems, somehow, premature.”

“Premature? You don’t really think she’s gone, do you?” Tony demanded, his jaw dropping slightly. “Have you been able to, uh, sense her?”

“No, of course not. I’d have informed you all immediately,” he said firmly. “But life and death are perhaps more malleable things when a sorcerer is concerned?”

“It’s been over two weeks, Thor. I think if she weren’t really dead, she’d have turned back up by now.”

“I have been reliably informed that hope springs eternal, my friend,” Thor said quietly. “In this case, it would not be the first time that Loki has found her way back from death. If she found a way to this world from Asgard, and then back with me when Amora tried to murder me, I must trust that there is still a chance.”

“Not that I’ve got a lot of experience with people who can come back from the dead like it’s not a big deal, but are you sure this isn’t just denial talking?” he asked gently.

“I can be sure of nothing.” He spread his hands. “I do not even know for certain that this is the place of which she spoke. But...what is the alternative? To accept that I’ve lost her again? To accept that this time, she may not come back? To accept that the reprieve we were granted was never to be more than the blink of an eye?” He sighed. “The day may come when I must accept that, but for now, I have faith in her cunning.”

Tony studied him in silence for a few long moments. “Okay.”

“Thank you, friend Tony.”

He tried to think of what he might be getting thanked for and eventually settled for simply saying, “You’re welcome.”

*****

Lucy slung a sack of mangos over her shoulder and trudged toward Rabbit’s burrow. She spared a glance up at the healing starburst in the sky and crossed her fingers, hoping she wasn’t going to need to patch it a third time. Every time she touched it, should could feel a bright golden grief leaking through from the other side, sharp and hot and scalding. She was still far too raw to muster a defense against it.

“Jones?”

“Yeah, what?” she demanded irritably. “Wait, _Coulson_?”

She turned to see a disheveled looking pair of agents trotting toward her. “You didn’t stay out of Selvig’s lab, did you?”

“We were supposed to stay out of Selvig’s lab?” Clint asked, his brows furrowing.

“Well, I don’t know about you, but he was.” She pointed at Phil. “And I’m guessing you didn’t listen.”

“Are we where I think we are?” Clint demanded. Phil leaned on his knees and tried to catch his breath, one hand glued to his side.

“The underworld, yes. I don’t know that there’s really that much question about it when you pay a ferryman to cross a black river, Barton.”

“What are you still doing down here, Jones?” Phil finally managed to ask, grimacing.

“I’m dead. You don’t get to badger me about helping you,” she said, snorting. “What’s up with you? You get into a fight with somebody already?”

“This happened prior to, well, prior to death.” Phil straightened.

“Still hurts?”

“Yes, it still hurts,” he snapped.

“Huh. You might not be completely dead, then,” Lucy chirped. “Good for you.”

“What about me?” Clint asked.

“You still hurt?”

“Maybe.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fucking hell, Barton, just answer the question.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then maybe you’re both not completely dead.”

“Like what, we’re in a coma?” Clint demanded. Phil frowned.

“Well, I’m guessing you’re both in separate comas, not the same coma. Or on the verge of dying. Or wedged in rubble somewhere and this is just a hallucination you’ve sucked me into. Whatever you’re doing, good luck with that.” She smiled brightly. “I’m pulling for you. I really _believe_ in your ability to negotiate this with the same level of finesse you bring to everything else you blow up.”

“You could help,” Phil pointed out.

“I _could_ , but I’ve got Spanish soap operas to watch and mangos to eat and amphibians to get harassed by.”

“I believe you did, in fact, promise to show me how to get out of here at one point,” Phil grunted.

“Offer void where prohibited,” she retorted.

“You set the contract on fire. There was blood involved.”

“I don’t remember that actually being part of the contract.” She chewed at the inside of her cheek. “Point of fact, I don’t remember actually _promising_ you. I think it was more like a dare.”

“Barton?” Phil asked.

“I remember it being a promise,” Clint said innocently.

“You’re a pair of fucking dicks, you know that?”

“It’s not like you’re staying down here anyway, Jones,” Phil sighed. “What’s the harm in helping us get back before it’s too late?”

“Who says I’m not going to stay down here? It’s nice down here. Nobody gets in your face down here.”

“That so?” Clint asked.

“Much,” she conceded, shrugging. “Nobody gets in your face _much_ down here.”

“Look, Jones, this is an all-hands-on-deck situation. And, all things being equal, I’d prefer not to die right now. Please help us.” Phil put his hands on her shoulders.

“We’re not having a moment, Coulson,” she grunted, shoving the bag of mangos at Clint. “And I really don’t care how many hands you have on deck for this. Not my problem. Dead, remember?”

“Dead, or hiding from your brother?”

“Dude, my body is partially vaporized and partially wedged in a trench somewhere like a mile below the ocean’s surface. Doesn’t get much fucking deader,” she snapped. “Come on. This isn’t going to get any easier if we wait.”

“It would be a shame to have saved the world just to have it fall to something else,” Clint observed casually, falling in behind her.

“What did you people _do_ , Coulson? I mean, it’s been what, a week?”

“Two,” Phil corrected. “And I don’t know what happened. Erik was working on the Tesseract, and--”

“The what now?”

“Glowing blue energy cube,” Clint supplied.

“Super-weapon glowing-blue-energy-cube or like, general weird-shit glowing-blue-energy-cube?” Lucy asked, waving to an armadillo. It made a rude gesture and scampered into the underbrush.

“Did that armadillo just--?” Clint asked.

“Yes,” Lucy sighed.

“Why did it--?”

“Because she’s a prick, Barton. And also I might owe her money.”

“That’s classified information, Jones,” Phil said, ignoring them.

“So the former.” Lucy stretched her shoulder. “Wait, is this the glowing blue energy cube thing that HYDRA used to power all their crazy super-weapons? Holy shit, you guys found that when you found Rogers, didn’t you?”

“Might’ve.”

“Clint,” Phil said sharply.

“Pretty sure the cat’s out of the bag on that one, sir,” Clint sighed.

“Jesus Herbert Christ. You guys got blown up by a freaky super-weapon battery? I feel like I should warn you right now that just because I get you out of here, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to come back to life. I mean, if you got mostly-atomized or are basically a lump of charcoal on life support or an irradiated super-skeleton, this isn’t going to do much. Like, you’re going to wake up and look around and think ‘Oh, wow, this really fucking hurts’ and then flat-line again and wind up right back here.”

“We’ll take our chances,” Phil muttered.

“We will?” Clint asked, looking skeptically at Lucy.

“You could try healing us,” Phil suggested.

“Man, you guys are just like, fucking _jammed_ into the bargaining stage, aren’t you?” Lucy snorted. “Next you’ll be promising me that you’ll give up porn and drinking if I just send you back in one piece.”

“You care if we drink or look at porn? That’s kind of creepy.”

“Well, no, Barton, _I_ don’t. I don’t think most anybody does.”

“So long as it’s not on the job,” Phil muttered.

“Okay, point,” Lucy said. “But I meant more like in terms of the things that people try offering to the cold, uncaring universe in exchange for their lives. It’s stuff they feel marginally guilty about, not stuff anybody else gives a shit about.” 

“I think we’re straying from the point, Jones.” Phil rubbed his side. “Do you think you can help us?”

“Yeah, probably.” She shrugged and looked back up at the patched hole. She felt like she’d scorch if she got too close.

“All right. _Will_ you help us?” he asked evenly.

“What’s in it for me?”

“A medal?” Clint suggested. She rolled her eyes.

“Go ahead and drop the bag by that tree.” Lucy rubbed her forehead and thought for a moment. “You want to tell me exactly what the fuck happened to you two?”

“Well, it--”

“It’s classified,” Phil said firmly. “Do you genuinely need to know precisely what happened in order to fix it?”

“No, but if my motivation for helping you is a galloping case of the warm fuzzies, I feel like you should maybe be throwing me a few bones, here.” Lucy smiled thinly. “And also you’re not really in a position to be telling me no?”

“Once we’re back, we can arrange for suitable payment, or immunity against any pending charges. Or we can negotiate with the Mexican government to forgive the bill for you wrecking--”

“Coulson,” she said sharply. He stopped talking and shot her an exasperated look. “I am _dead_. I am no longer obligated to give even the tiniest shit about money, felony charges, or angry sovereign nations. It’s actually quite liberating, may I suggest you try it?”

“I think I’ll stick with denial, thank you,” he snapped. “And honestly, you’ve been dead for less than a month. Rogers was dead for several decades, and he’s fine.”

“You know Thor’s not above coming down here to get you, right?” Clint asked cheerfully.

“I hate you both,” she growled.

“So you’ve already made it to anger, then?”

Lucy glared at the archer and sighed. “If I get you out of here, I think you two being gone is going to be its own reward. It was nice until you showed up.”

“You just got flipped off by an armadillo that you’re in debt to,” Clint pointed out.

“Yeah, but that’s been on-going. She’s been doing that for years.” She shrugged. “Nothing to do with the current circumstances whatsoever.”

“So, you’ll help?” Phil asked.

“For a certain definition of help, yes.” Lucy looked them over. “Or at least, I’ll try. No guarantees, no refunds, all sales final.”

“Good enough for now,” he said after a moment. “By the way, you might have mentioned the yeti base in Antarctica when it came time to evacuate the continent.”

“The yeti base,” she repeated slowly. “I...seriously? The fuck do yetis have to do with me?”

“You didn’t know about the yeti?”

“I _still_ don’t know about the yeti. I know _nothing_ about the yeti. The yeti are known unknowns. Jesus fuck, Coulson, one problem at a time,” Lucy snapped. “Do not distract me with your weird babblings while I’m trying to resurrect you and your sidekick.”


	46. Chapter 46

“You guys seriously aren’t going to tell me what fucking happened to you?” Lucy crabbed, trudging across a narrow wooden bridge.

“We were caught in a bright blue explosion,” Phil sighed. “Then lights out.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“ _That’s_ what you’ve been refusing to talk about for two days?” she asked skeptically.

“We’ve also been refusing to talk about my preference for archery, SHIELD security systems, and how HYDRA managed to keep its record system intact for the past seventy years in spite of near-constant harassment, internal strife, and base explosions,” Clint pointed out cheerfully. “So it’s not like we’ve spent the whole two days just on that.”

“You fucking guys,” Lucy groaned. “I guess congratulations on joining the ranks of like a million unnamed HYDRA goons from back when secret monster fuhrer guy was getting this thing up and running.”

“Red Skull.”

“Wait, is that what you guys called him or what he called himself?” She frowned. “I mean, I know he spoke English, but wouldn’t that have been like Roten Totenkopf or something in German?”

“No,” they answered in unison.

“How did you manage to get Thor back so quickly, if it’s taking us this long?” Phil asked, shading his eyes and checking the sun’s position.

“I wasn’t on foot,” she said. “And we didn’t have to backtrack because _somebody_ fell into a fucking river.”

“How many times do I have to apologize for that?” Clint muttered, glowering at her.

“One more,” she shot back.

“Hey, I’m not the one who stopped to play a soccer game.”

“That was a very important game that I’m not going to try explaining again.”

“A fact which we both appreciate immensely,” Phil said drily. She snorted. “Especially since it was important enough to delay us, but not important enough to refrain from swapping the ball out for a talking rabbit.”

“That’s how it _goes_ , Coulson.” Lucy rolled her eyes. “That’s how it always goes down. Anyway, we’re almost to the black river. We get you two back across there and out into limbo, we should be just about done.”

“Thank god,” Clint groaned. “I didn’t think being dead was supposed to hurt this much.”

“Well, if you were properly dead, it wouldn’t. But you’re not. Ish.” She shrugged. “If you want to go back, I guess you’re stuck taking the good with the bad.”

“And I never thought being dead would involve getting this hungry.” The archer’s stomach growled.

“Well, I never thought I’d actually have to explain to anybody why it’s a bad idea to eat in the underworld if you don’t want to stay.”

“Easy for you to say. You certainly weren’t shy about chowing down.”

Lucy shrugged. “I crossed that bridge a long time ago, Barton. I mean, even if I didn’t plan on staying here this time, I’m never out of here for _that_ long. Eventually, any magician who does anything worth a good god damn winds up knocking around in an alternate plane of existence or two. It’s like being Schroedinger’s cat, except you never know whether you’re alive or dead until you get a look at what’s outside the box.”

“You’ve picked a terrible time to spout philosophical nonsense, Jones,” Phil sighed, rubbing his side again. 

He hadn’t complained about his injuries to nearly the extent Barton had, but Lucy wasn’t unaware that they were bothering him. She tamped down a flicker of pity. There really wasn’t anything she could do about it except get them properly on their way. Just offering sympathy wasn’t going to help much. They reached the crest of the bridge, and she stopped, frowning. Clint almost ran into her, drawing up short close enough that she could feel his breath on her shoulder.

“Uh, that wasn’t there before,” he said, confused. “What the hell?”

“What are we gawking at?” Phil asked pointedly from behind them.

“Big fuck-off hedge maze,” Lucy told him, leaning to the side so that he could see around her.

“Huh.” His brow furrowed. “No, that definitely was not there when we came this way.”

“Not that the geography of the underworld is actually really _nailed down_ , per se, but...” She trailed off and shrugged.

“But you’ve never seen it before, either,” Clint supplied.

“But it’s not supposed to be here,” Phil hazarded.

“But you’re both right!” Lucy said with enough false cheer that Clint elbowed her in the ribs.

“How are we getting around it?” Phil asked, craning his neck.

She shook her head and started walking again. The maze extended as far as she could see in either direction. They fell in behind her and waited for an answer.

“I can transform and scout around, see if it’s worth it or even possible to go the long way. If it’s not, I can try to map a route through it. Or we might be able to cut through, depending on how fragile the plants are. I doubt that last one’s really going to be an option, though. I mean, usually these things crop up here, somebody didn’t want anybody taking short cuts.”

“Could you carry us over?”

“No offense, Barton, but I did that with Thor, and now he won’t stop pestering me to join the family. Lesson learned.”

“He thought you were his brother before that, though,” Clint pointed out.

“Yeah, well, go fuck yourself,” Lucy grunted. “I’m not taking any chances.”

“Jones, would it be so terrible to at least try being polite for the time being?” Phil asked wearily.

“I’m doing you guys a solid, Coulson. Or at least trying to.” She pushed her hair back and scowled at the hedges. The height and bulk of the plants was growing more obvious as they got closer. There was unlikely to be a way to just shove through the walls and go straight on. A shrill, tinny whine sounded in her ear. “Hey, Mosquito.”

“Hey, Lucy.” 

She held out her hand, and Phil and Clint fell back a step as a mosquito the size of a sparrow landed on her palm.

“What’s the deal with the maze?”

“It’s a labyrinth!” Mosquito buzzed happily.

“Uh- _huh_.” Lucy tilted her head. “Who put it up?”

“Seven-Death.” Mosquito groomed her antennae with her forefeet. “Neat, huh?”

“Seven-Death put up a labyrinth.”

“One of the Mams told him about some guy who made his firstborn the god of one and then sacrificed seven warriors and seven maidens every seven years to keep his cult strong. He thought the idea was pretty cool.”

“Did he, now? How drunk were they?” Lucy sighed.

“Oh, you know. Somewhere between really drunk and really, really, _really_ drunk.” Mosquito waved one set of arms close together and one set of arms far apart to indicate the general distance, her wings fluttering to keep her balanced on her hind legs.

“So he just went ahead and put up a labyrinth? Right here? And nobody raised any sort of objection?” she demanded.

“They’ll get around to it, probably. Everybody just stopped fighting about the false paths he and One-Death wanted to put up, so I think they’re just ignoring it for the moment.” She settled back onto Lucy’s arm and paced up to her elbow.

“Who’s Seven-Death?” Phil asked, his voice pitched low.

“The underworld’s biggest bonehead,” Mosquito snickered.

“Oh, that’s not even close to true,” Lucy said, shaking her head. “He’s a death-god.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “We could have figured that part out on our own, Jones.”

“And kind of a dick. And apparently now in the business of building labyrinths. And tragically misunderstanding Greek mythology, though I can kind of see where the numerology would appeal to him.” She pursed her lips. “Motherfucker.”

“You know, I _could_ lead you through.” Mosquito rubbed her wings together, her antennae flicking coyly over her eyes.

“Yeah?” Lucy asked, her eyes narrowing. Phil crossed his arms, and Clint reached for the bow he didn’t have with him before he caught himself.

“Yeah.”

“That’d be awful kindly of you,” the magician said.

“Well, I might want a _little_ something in return. Just for my time, you know?” she admitted, taking to the air and hovering between them. “Nothing much, though.”

“Oh? What’d you have in mind?” Lucy asked.

“Jones,” Phil said warningly, taking a step back.

“Chill your tits, Coulson.”

“What does that even mean?” Phil glanced at Clint, who shrugged.

“Ask Darcy?” he suggested.

Mosquito landed on Lucy’s hand again. “I just want a teeny, tiny bit of blood. Just a sip. Barely enough to wet my beak.”

“Oh, little bug, that would burn you right up from the inside out.” She laughed in surprise and shook her head.

“I’ll take my chances,” Mosquito snapped. “Deal?”

“What do you want a little of my blood for?”

“Maybe I want to outshine the fireflies. You ever think of that?”

“More power to you, I suppose, but I’m not kidding.” Lucy shooed her off gently. “I’m fire and wrath and _seriously, Barton_?” She turned and glared at him, and he almost managed to look innocent in time. “You’re getting monoscopic vision for your next birthday, I fucking swear.”

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I just thought being dead should get me out of having to listen to villain monologues for a while.”

“I _know_ what you are,” Mosquito sighed, zipping around them and pointing up to the mending hole in the sky. “Everybody down here knows. Maybe I just want to roll the dice again. Worked out pretty well last time, right? And it’s not like I’m even asking for anything in perpetuity. Just this once. Just from you.”

Lucy chewed her lip. There wasn’t much harm in it, and if Mosquito understood the potential danger, it was hardly on her.

“If you’re sure,” she said finally.

“I’m sure. Let’s go!” She banked and veered toward the maze.

“You’re going to have to go slow enough for us to keep up, lady,” Lucy called after her. “Fucking mosquitoes. Come on, you two.”

“Have you thought this through?” Phil hissed.

“As much as I ever do.”

“Not reassuring, Jones,” Clint said.

“Oh, come on. What’s the worst that could happen?” she asked.

Phil’s fingers twitched, and he almost winced at the question. “Please don’t ask that. Ever.”

Lucy grinned at him. “But if you don’t ask, you might never find out.”

“Yes. Exactly.” Phil shot her a look. 

“At least we can’t die again, right?” Clint soothed him.

“ _Theoretically_ ,” Lucy corrected. “I mean, first time for everything, right?”

“Hurry up, you three!” Mosquito called back irritably. “There’s only so slow I can fly, you know.”

*****

Fury paced slowly, his hands clasped behind him. The stark hospital wing was already getting on his nerves, and he’d only been in it for five minutes. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“I’m not asking for a miracle, doctor.”

“Director Fury, I understand that some of these men and women have been your colleagues for many years.” She paused and looked up from the charts. “I understand that some of them are friends. People you’ve come to depend on. I understand that this constitutes a serious crisis. But I need you to understand that you have access to honest-to-god miracle-workers, and that they’re in other departments. If they can’t do anything, you can’t expect me to make promises you know I can’t keep. These injuries are grave. Some of these agents are highly unlikely to recover. We are doing everything we can, and we’re doing it as fast as we can. But you’re not doing anyone any good prowling around here, trying to get the impossible done by sheer force of will. SHIELD needs you out there.”

“Out there, huh?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

The doctor frowned and went back to her charts. “Not that I put too much stock in the rumor mill, but the scuttlebutt is that there’s some ass that needs kicking, yes.”

Fury chuckled to himself and shook his head. “That an official diagnosis?”

“I haven’t even seen the patient, director, how could it possibly be an official diagnosis?” she asked. “Who do I look like, Dr. Pym?”

“Pym’s not that kind of doctor.”

“Hasn’t stopped him yet,” she retorted. “If anyone’s status changes, you’ll be the first to know. I will page you personally. But for now, visiting hours are over.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mosquito and Seven-Death are from the Maya creation myth recounted in the Popol Vuh, and the Mams are from more generalized Maya mythology.


	47. Chapter 47

Phil stopped at a wide intersection and looked up. Lucy and Clint exchanged glances, and Mosquito hovered around them, buzzing lazily.

“We’re going around in circles,” he announced. He pointed at the insect. “You’re leading us in circles.”

“I am not,” she protested.

“I don’t think she is,” Lucy agreed, looking around. “I mean, obviously we’re not going in a straight line, but we can’t really do that in a maze.”

“Look at the sun, Jones. We’re not getting anywhere.”

“Uh....” Lucy covered her eyes and looked up. “ _Which_ sun, Coulson?”

“What do you mean ‘which sun’?” he demanded.

“I mean, there are five suns, and none of them really make a point of sticking to a super-precise path. You can tell how late it is in the day by how close they are to the horizon, but it’s not like ‘Oh, they’re there and there, we must be heading east.’ How many suns do _you_ see?”

“One,” Phil said firmly.

“Two?” Clint offered.

“You’re only seeing two?” Lucy asked.

“You’re seeing two?” Phil repeated. Clint pointed at two spots in the sky.

“That’s not a sun,” Mosquito scoffed. “That’s just where Lucy punched a hole in the sky and then failed to fix it properly.”

“It’s fixed enough,” Lucy protested.

“Goddammit, Jones,” Phil sighed.

“It _is_ fixed. It’s just ugly. I mean, it’s like half the size it was when I fixed it the first time. It’s healing up.” She crossed her arms and scowled at them. “It’ll be fine in just a few years. Nobody will ever know it was torn up in the first place. And anyway, can we get going? If I have to look at featureless walls of greenery for another six hours, I’m going to lose my mind.”

Mosquito looped over them and flew to the right, and they fell in behind her.

“Better than the walls of greenery with talking skulls in the branches,” Clint said.

“That depends entirely on whether or not you can keep from getting into arguments with them, dude,” Lucy pointed out. “And somehow contriving to lose fist-fights to something without an actual body.”

“I didn’t expect them to be biters. Or nearly so crafty,” he muttered.

“Yes, _well_. It also depends on not,” she shot a pointed look at Mosquito, “making half an hour of really bad bone jokes.”

“Oh, come on. Those jokes were hilarious,” Mosquito protested.

“They were _awful_. You should be ashamed of even knowing such horrible jokes.” 

“Assuming we’re not going to wander here until the end of time, how much farther?” Phil asked sourly.

“We’re just a little ways out from the center. After that it’s actually a more direct route out,” Mosquito reassured him. “People are meant to come through the other way around, so they’d get to the center faster and then, if they got past that, wander around longer.”

“Great.” Lucy sighed. “This whole thing was a serious dick move on Seven-Death’s part.”

“It seemed like a really good idea at the time,” Mosquito hummed. “I don’t think he really thought it through all the way, though.”

“Like the fact that somebody can just bring some weed-killer with them and get through a lot quicker?” Clint asked, rubbing his knuckles.

“Well, you build a fake road, you can just steer whoever takes it off into a pit trap or a swamp full of crocodiles or into an Ikea or something. You build a labyrinth, they’re kind of penned in until they find their way out. It’s like, the exact opposite of what he and One-Death are usually trying to accomplish with this.”

“Stops people in their tracks, though,” Mosquito said.

“Yeah, there’s that, but it doesn’t really jam them up as bad as it could.”

“Jones, do you think you might at any point stop giving death-gods and their minions ideas on how to be better at their jobs?” Phil sighed.

“No. And Mosquito’s not a minion,” Lucy said, frowning. “Or at least, if she is, she’s a hero’s minion. Kind of? Right?”

Mosquito settled on her head and peered back at Phil. “Relax, buddy. I’m on your side. I can’t do anything with the dead, and I’ve got kids to feed.”

“See?” Clint piped up from ahead. “It’s all perfectly above-board, Phil. We’re following someone who just wants to give us all yellow fever and can’t do that if we’re already dead.”

“I do not! It’s not like I planned that when this all started, you know. I just wanted to eat. Is a little bit a blood from everybody such a huge deal in exchange for people living past, I don’t know, _thirty_ such a crime against humanity? No, it is not. Nobody knew about germs or microorganisms back then, so I think I can be excused for not realizing that I was giving people stuff I didn’t know existed,” she huffed. “And another thing! How do you think _I_ feel, knowing that I’m flying around with gross viruses and weird parasites living in my _stomach_ , huh? Think about it. It’s like getting told you’ve got a bad case of worms, but instead of giving you pills to get rid of them, they’re going to just burn down your house and kill all your kids.”

“I think this has maybe strayed a little closer to the personal than it really needed to get,” Lucy warned. “Mosquito, we know you don’t mean it, but the fall-out is pretty miserable, and it can lead to some pretty intense feelings. Barton, _be nice_.”

“Yes, _mom_.”

“Clint,” Phil sighed.

“Yes, _dad_.”

Lucy shook her head, and Mosquito flew sullenly on ahead of them. Clint followed her closely, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“How do you not just put on a stupid-looking cape every so often and blow up a national landmark?” she asked. “I can’t imagine putting up with this, in stereo, every day.”

“You put up with HYDRA and AIM,” Phil pointed out.

“Well, yeah, but that was different,” she protested.

“How?”

“For starters, it was just sort of _expected_ that you’d put on a stupid-looking cape and blow up a national landmark every so often. You didn’t even have to fill out any paperwork. You just sort of stuck it on the calendar and requested the appropriate amount of time off. The stress relief was built in.”

“I don’t know why I even asked,” he sighed.

“We’re here!” Mosquito chirped, banking back sharply and pointing. Clint was leaning against the hedge, already looking bored.

“This is the center?” Phil asked, glancing around.

“Well, no, but it’s right around that corner,” Mosquito sighed, flattening her antennae against her thorax. She pointed with two hands at the edge of one wall. “I figured we should all be together for this.” She buzzed around the corner slowly. “I present to you... _the Minostor_!”

Clint and Phil exchanged tired glances, and Lucy winced. “That’s not actually what it’s call-- _Rabbit_?”

The center of the maze was a wide, flat square with a small ceiba tree in each corner and Rabbit posed dramatically in the center. Phil and Clint stared at him, and Lucy resisted the urge to cover her eyes with her hand. His ears were flat against his back, and he’d tied a pair of horns to his head. He seemed decidedly unamused by their reaction.

“I’m so glad we walked all this way for this,” Clint said flatly.

“Jones?” Phil prompted.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I just...I’m actually a little in awe of how unbelievably stupid this is. This is like the alpha and omega of why nobody should ever listen to any of the Mams.”

“Yeah, but they get around that by only suggesting things when you’re drunk enough to listen to them,” Mosquito pointed out.

“Are those even bull’s horns, Rabbit?” she sighed.

“They’re _like_ bull’s horns,” he hedged, putting one paw up to steady them as he dropped back down to all fours. “But they’re better than bull’s horns.”

“You couldn’t find bull’s horns, could you?” She pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Look, nobody said they _had_ to be a specific type of horn, okay?” he said.

“The Minotaur was a human-bull hybrid, Rabbit.”

“Oh. So that part would be kind of important.”

“It would be, yeah, but I think we might be a little past that right now,” she explained.

“You _think_?” Clint demanded.

“Shush, Barton.” Lucy looked around. “Maybe you can go find a steer’s skull and paint it?”

“Ew. I’m not wearing a cow’s skull as a hat.” Rabbit made a face, and the horn he’d been bracing slipped back. “And don’t even start giving me that look, because I’m only filling in until Seven-Death can get Ixquic* to come home.”

“Seven-Death thinks he’s going to get Ixquic to come back down here and sit in the middle of a hedge-maze until it gets cut down by everybody with two brain cells to rub together?” Lucy asked, cocking her head. “Did he bother sobering up before he decided that?”

“Probably not,” Rabbit admitted.

“He remembers why she left, right? She got knocked up by some dude, sentenced to death, and decided to screw daddy dearest and all his bros out of human sacrifice for eternity in revenge?” 

“I think he said something about letting bygones be bygones,” Rabbit muttered. “She’s first-born, so it kind of has to be her.”

The trio stared at him. Lucy shook her head slowly, and Clint cleared his throat.

“If they can reconcile after family drama like that, maybe you and Thor’ve got a shot after all?” he offered.

“Now is really not the time, Clint,” Phil grunted.

“And I don’t think she’s going to go for it, dude,” Lucy added. “But best of luck to you, Rabbit. I think you’re going to need it. Catch you on the way back, if you’re still here.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” he said, trying to adjust the horns. “Dammit.” He finally got them untied. “Okay, I’m not supposed to let you just walk on through.”

“What, exactly, is your brilliant plan for stopping us, Rabbit?” she groaned.

“Can we just refuse to participate in this?” Clint asked. “I’ve seen video of you just walking away from things that weren’t as dumb as this. We wouldn’t, you know, doom mankind to anything too horrible if we just kept on walking, right?”

“Rabbit?” Lucy asked firmly.

“I’m supposed to plant these teeth and grow a dragon,” he said, waving the horns around.

“You what? Oh Jesus fucking _Christ_ , Rabbit, that’s not even from the right myth,” she snapped. “And even if it were, you’ve got it fucking backwards. You plant _dragon’s teeth_ to grow an _invincible army_. What are those, just like some guy’s teeth?”

Rabbit stuffed them into the ground point-first and thumped them down with his foot.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he scoffed.

“They’re Cipactli’s teeth,” Mosquito chimed in.

“Cipactli,” Lucy repeated flatly.

“Who’s Cipactli?” Phil demanded.

“These are _Cipactli the World-Monster_ ’s teeth?” she growled, ignoring him.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Clint whispered. Phil shook his head.

“Some of them?” Rabbit said, backing away. She pounced on him, vaguely concerned that she’d changed shape without meaning to, and more concretely concerned that she appeared to be a jaguar. White paws dug into the earth on either side of Rabbit’s head, black claws sliding out of their sheaths.

“Uh, Jones?” Clint called.

“Not now,” she snarled back. “Where did Seven-Death even _get_ Cipactli’s teeth from?”

“Jones, they are sprouting,” Phil shouted. “The teeth are sprouting.”

“Phil, Jones is a fucking panther.”

“We can deal with a panther, Clint. We most likely cannot deal with something called a world-monster.”

Rabbit clamped his forepaws over his eyes. “Don’t eat me, don’t eat me, don’t eat me...”

“Holy shit!” Phil shouted. “ _Jones!_ ”

Lucy bared her teeth and looked over at them, only to find herself looking into an eye the size of a beach ball. She could see the Americas picked out in greens and browns in the iris, with the oceans shading from aqua to almost black. The shapes distorted when a black vertical slit widened and focused on her. She blinked, suddenly taking in the rest of the massive skull. The top of the caiman’s head took up almost the entire clearing, grass and roots and earth rippling into shape as scales and creases and flesh and bone. Her teeth slid out of the soil as she opened her mouth, beginning to rip free of the substrate she’d formed from. Lucy batted Rabbit with one paw, rolling him away.

“Run, dammit,” she snarled. “Now! Fast as you can!”

A low growl like slabs of granite scraping together sounded from deep in Cipactli’s still-forming throat, and Lucy scrambled up and onto the back of her neck, her claws curling into the wet sod and helping her keep her footing. She slithered down the other side, grabbed the back of Phil’s vest in her teeth, and pulled back. Clint climbed up after her, and she hooked her claws into his vest and pushed him flat when the caiman began to move.

“What the hell is happening, Jones?” Phil demanded.

Lucy spat and flexed her muzzle, trying to get the last threads from the jacket out of her teeth. Phil clung to the plate-sized scale ridges as the monster surged forward, her shoulders flexing and rolling as her body tore away from the firmament. She trampled the maze under her as if it were nothing but weeds and bracken.

“I don’t know. Nobody’s ever been stupid enough to try waking up Cipactli again,” she gritted, digging in as another growl vibrated the caiman’s frame. It was like trying to ride an earthquake.

“Can we die again, here?” Clint asked. “Is there an underworld under this one, or are we just stuck wandering around here flat as pancakes?”

“Shut up and hang on, Barton,” she snapped.

Skulls rattled from the hedges lining Cipactli’s back as she flexed, roared, and broke into a run. Lucy flattened her ears back and cringed at the noise, and Clint almost lost his grip as he tried to blot out the sound. She caught him and pulled him close against her ribs, muffling his frenzied swearing, and Phil slid back to shelter against her as well. Cipactli swept her head from side to side, snapping her jaws, and the crack of them coming together echoed through the valley like thunder. Lucy got a glimpse of the mountains and dug her claws in deeper right before the caiman threw herself up the slopes and wriggled over the peak.

“Brace yourselves,” she shouted. 

The wind whistled in their ears as the great beast flung herself down again, scrabbling desperately with her huge paws and then paddling down toward the black river at speed on her landslide of a belly. Lucy thought she glimpsed the horrified faces of the ferrymen and the great confusion of the newly dead as an earthen crocodile the size of a mountain range came barreling toward them. She imagined her own expression wasn’t much less horrified, though she was at least marginally less confused. Phil managed to pry his eyes off the onrushing ground long enough to shoot her a pleading look. She shrugged in response. She could as much steer Cipactli as she could pry the world off its axis.

Cipactli’s roar blended with the noise of the falling rocks and shaking earth by the time she reached the foot of the mountains, sheer inertia carrying her over the hills and to the banks of the river. She reared up, almost dislodging her riders, and then plunged into the water, her bulk raising a wave that set off a chain reaction of destruction once it hit the boats. Mud, river slime, and churned water drenched them and began loosening the caiman’s flesh. She sputtered in incoherent rage and pushed forward, seeking the depths she couldn’t find and failing to understand that her body was only dirt and root and rock.

Lucy felt a momentary twinge of pity for her before losing her grip on the monster’s back and being catapulted to the far bank of the river. The globe-eyes winked out as the head softened and dissolved. She landed just short of dry ground, belly-flopping unceremoniously into waist-deep water and knee-deep sludge. The impact sent her reeling back into human form, and she slogged out of the muck feeling a distinct lack of comradery with the world. Phil was only a short distance upriver, laboring unsuccessfully to free Clint from some unseen debris or obstacle. She made her way toward him, surveying the damage Cipactli’s passage had caused in a state of near-shock. The ferries were tangled and overturned, and everyone on the other side of Cipactli’s body were either floundering out of the water or trying hopelessly to untangle the boats. The earthwork dam of her torso was providing some refuge from the current, but it was a minor help at best.

“Little help here, Jones?” Phil grunted, pulling to no apparent effect on something well submerged.

She sighed and waded in, following his arm with her hand.

“Not to alarm anyone, but the water’s rising,” Clint said tightly, bracing his hands on their shoulders and squirming.

“We’re on it, Barton,” Phil said tightly, his face drawn into a mask of fatigue and pain.

Lucy frowned when she reached the object Phil was trying to dislodge. It felt like a thin web of rope. Leave it to Barton to get caught in a fisherman’s net, she thought. She moved slightly and groped along its length.

“You pull that way, I’ll pull this way,” she said, sighing. “On three. One...two... _three_.”

Phil gave it everything he had, and she braced herself and wrenched the net away from whatever it had been tangled around. Clint kicked out and paddled free, making for shore. Lucy steered Phil in the same direction, and the three of them collapsed on the bank for a few minutes.

“I hate this place,” Clint finally said after he’d caught his breath. “It’s awful, and nothing makes any sense, and I want to go home.”

“Think you can make that happen, Jones?” Phil asked quietly, staring up at the sky.

“We just rode the partially resurrected world-monster over a fucking mountain and across the black river, Coulson. I think we can pretty much do whatever the fuck we want at this point.” She levered herself up on an elbow and looked around. “I think it’s also usually a good idea to get the hell out of Dodge once you’ve fucked shit up on this scale, even if it really wasn’t your fault.”

“Out the front gates, then?”

“Oh, fuck no. Those gates are just...no.” She shook her head firmly and pointed to the dragon’s maw she’d found when she’d been looking for Thor. “I’m done, you’re both done, we’re not dicking around with the gates right now. We’re going out the easy way.”

“That’s the easy way? Out a dragon’s face?” Clint asked petulantly.

“It’s not a real dragon. So yes, that’s the easy way. Come on, the quicker we get up there, the quicker we get out of here.” She got to her feet and pulled Phil up. Clint waved his hand at her, cajoling her to help him as well, and she rolled her eyes and hoisted him up. “Unbelievable, Barton.”

“I don’t think you’re allowed to use that word to describe anything less unbelievable than whatever _that_ was ever again,” he said seriously, scraping mud off his pants. “Magic teeth just turned half the country into a giant alligator.”

“Caiman,” she corrected absently, surveying their climb. She was tired, and everything ached, and, now that the immediate threat was gone, she desperately wanted a drink. She wanted a drink, and she wanted to hit something. She flicked some of the grime off her clothes and out of her hair and considered her alternatives. “I don’t suppose anyone’s up for a quick round of transfiguration?”

They stared at her in stony silence for a few moments.

“Okay, climbing up the fucking cliff of doom it is. Don’t say I didn’t offer,” she growled. Phil looked up at the tunnel entrance again, a shadow of defeat settling onto his face.

“Fine. What did you have in mind?” he asked heavily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Ixquic is from the Popol Vuh and general Maya mythology. She’s the mother of the hero twins and actually the daughter of Cuchumaquic, one of the lesser death-lords. After her pregnancy was discovered, she refused to name the father. When she claimed to still be a virgin--which was true due to the unusual circumstances of the conception--her father and uncles sentenced her to be sacrificed. Instead, she made a fake heart out of red tree sap, sent that back with their messengers, and went to live with her mother-in-law in exile. The sap-heart fooled the death-lords so thoroughly that it provided humans with an out in perpetuity.


	48. Chapter 48

“What if I--”

“No,” Phil said firmly.

“Then how about--”

“Nope.” Clint shook his head.

“Okay, fine, I’m just going to--”

“No.”

“-- _go and eat something before I reduce you both to a pile of fine ash, you pair of contrarian assholes_.” 

Lucy stalked off, fuming. They’d spent the last five minutes shooting down every permutation of the “transmute everybody” plan she’d come up with, and the dim, small part of her that understood their hesitation perfectly was getting dimmer and smaller by the second. The longer they spent screwing around here, so close to getting the pair of them packed up and sent off that she could practically _taste_ success on the tip of her tongue, the more opportunity there was for something completely asinine and unpredictable and catastrophic to happen. Again.

“You trying to slip out of our deal?” Mosquito asked sharply, dropping out of the sky.

Lucy glared at her, then shrugged guiltily. “No. I’d actually forgotten about you. What with the fucking Caiman of Doom and everything.”

“Yeah, well. That’s Rabbit for you,” Mosquito sniffed, settling onto a pile of debris for a second before fluttering her wings and taking off again.

“Really? Because my experience of Rabbit is basically him being lazy, a bit of a glutton, and more or less innocuous,” she grumbled.

“Believe me, he pulls more than his fair share of nonsense,” Mosquito said. “Usually not on this sort of scale, but it was bound to happen sooner or later. He’s really not very careful about his pranks.”

“Christ on a bike,” Lucy sighed, her eyes sweeping over the remnants of Cipactli’s temporary body.

“So, about me getting paid?” Mosquito hinted.

“Yeah, fine. Belly up to the bar.” Lucy held out her arm. “Just be careful, and no blaming me when you burst into flame and die.”

“Would you mind maybe, uh, turning back into a jaguar just for a second?” she wheedled, wringing her first two sets of hands together.

“Why?” Lucy asked, pinching the bridge of her nose. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted an answer.

“Cats taste better.”

“Yeah, no.”

“Fine,” Mosquito huffed. “What’s the beef with your friends over there, anyway?”

“Nobody’s in any shape to climb the cliffs, and they won’t let me transform them. So we’re at a particularly annoying impasse.”

Mosquito landed on her arm and cocked her head. “Why don’t you just turn back into the magpie, take up a rope, and then haul them up after you?”

Lucy stared at her for a few seconds, then scowled. “Why don’t you just shut up?”

“You didn’t think of that, did you?” Mosquito chuckled.

“Half my brains are scrambled and half my brains have been replaced by river water, okay? Now just get this over with before I reconsider the wisdom of super-powered blood-suckers.”

“Okay, then!” Mosquito folded her wings daintily and stuck her beak into Lucy’s arm.

“Ow, ow, ow, I take it back, fucking _ow_ ,” she hissed, shooing Mosquito away. She clutched her arm and made a face. “I thought your spit was supposed to be kind of a painkiller.”

“I think you’re thinking of leeches.” Mosquito landed heavily and patted her belly. “Wow, you weren’t kidding. Am I glowing? I feel like I’m glowing.”

“A little?” Lucy rubbed the welt forming on her arm and knelt down for a better look. “Okay, more than a little. You look like a lightning bug.”

“Good.”

“You gonna be all right? I need to get them up a cliff and out of here before I really do kill them. We’re all hitting that cranky phase of hanging out too long with people you don’t really like.” She jerked her head in Clint and Phil’s direction.

“Yeah, I think so. Not much to be done about it if I’m not, right?” Mosquito buzzed her wings uncomfortably.

“Well, I could stand around and feel guilty,” Lucy offered.

“That’s doesn’t really help _me_ much, though,” Mosquito pointed out.

“Moral support is a type of support, Mosquito.”

“Oh, just go away already.” Mosquito rolled her eyes and tested her wings before taking off. “I’ve got something to try.”

Lucy flexed her arm and concentrated on healing the puncture Mosquito had made. 

“Stupid bug,” she muttered, hissing to herself as the swelling went down and the sting faded. Her temper was frayed and her judgement was off. She needed to eat something and take a nap. She’d do both just as soon as she was finished getting her current two least-favorite government goons back into their bodies.

She stomped back along the river toward them. Phil looked demoralized enough that she felt irrationally angry over it. _Not my fault,_ she reminded herself.

“Have a nice lunch?” Clint asked acidly. 

“I settled up with Mosquito instead,” she grunted. “I’ve got an idea, and the first person to give me the slightest amount of shit over it is walking home. You dig?”

Phil’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing when she set off back toward a pile of wreckage that had washed ashore from the ferry pile-up. She found a few likely lengths of rope, hauled them out, and started knotting them together. After several minutes, she made her way back, dragging the heavy coil after her.

“I’m hauling the rope up, and then I’m hauling you up one at a time. I do not care how you secure yourselves to the rope, though I would strongly suggest you do it in such a way as to make yourselves as comfortable and non-budgable as possible. While I’m hauling you up, please do not jostle the rope or do anything else to dislodge me or the rope. Emergency exits involve gravity and falling a great distance, so I strongly advise against taking them. Any questions?”

Clint raised his hand. Phil shot him a warning look.

“Yes, Barton?”

“How are you getting that up there?” he asked.

Lucy sighed and rolled her eyes. “Magician, Barton. I don’t need to drag you into it to transform myself. I’ll tug on the rope when I’ve got it secured. You tug twice when you’re ready to come up.”

She shivered slightly, and then a magpie the size of a condor stood before them. She hopped over to the rope, beat her wings a few times, and then launched herself upward. She skimmed the cliff face, vaguely resenting it for being so high and sheer as she flew. _It’s like it just never fucking ends_ , she thought. _Even here, it never fucking ends. Some ignorant dumbfuck goes digging up Cipactli’s fucking teeth and tries for a power-grab by giving them to some jackass they bribed with a gods-damned cabbage._

She darted into the dragon’s maw, turned back into a human, and looped the rope between the two sets of fangs. It was a crude pulley, but it would have to do. She signalled to them, then waited for the countersign. Finally, she felt two sharp jerks on the rope, and started hauling the first of them--Coulson, she thought, based on the weight--up the cliff face. It wasn’t nearly as easy as it would have been if they’d let her turn them into something easily-carried, but they’d both balked when she’d explained the ramifications of the process.

“Can I get a hand, Jones?” Phil asked when he reached the dragon’s lips.

She secured the rope quickly and dragged him up.

“Almost home, Coulson,” she sighed, helping him out of the harness he’d rigged. 

She left him to rest and pitched it back over, lowering it for Barton. She adjusted the arrangement and tugged on the rope, then waited for the signal that Clint was ready.

“I think we should all take a breather after Clint’s up,” Phil said after a few minutes.

“No dice.” She shook her head and started pulling when the cord in her hand danced twice.

“We’re exhausted. You’re exhausted. Correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s not much room for mistakes at this stage, is there?”

“You’re wrong,” she grunted, digging in her heels and hauling for all she was worth. She’d expected Barton to be heavier, but not by this much.

“That’s an extremely illuminating refutation, Jones. You should publish it as a position paper sometime.” He leaned back against the stone wall and closed his eyes.

“The hard part’s over. We get out the other side of this, the rest of it should be more or less automatic. You concentrate on finding your bodies, I give you a boost. Done, done, and done.” She gritted her teeth and pulled harder. “Buddha on a skateboard, is Barton made of _lead_?”

“Metaphorically?” Phil asked.

“No, literally. I swear, he weighs at least half again what you do.” Lucy braced herself and tried to get her breath back. “It’s like trying to hoist an elephant.”

“He’s got twenty pounds on me,” he sighed. “You’re just tired. I should have sent him up first.”

“Why didn’t you?” she asked. She got moving again. _Just get this over with. Then it’ll be pizza and beer for everybody. Just get this done._

“He’s in better shape than I am right now. He made a...convincing argument that it made...strategic sense for him to stay behind if it had to come to that.”

“He just flat-out mutinied, didn’t her?”

“That would be another way of putting it, yes.”

Lucy gave a choked laugh. “Insubordination doesn’t count if you’re dead at the time, right?”

“The places where it apparently doesn’t count if you’re Barton are legion.”

“At least it seems to have worked out in your favor,” she pointed out. 

“What happens when we get back in our bodies?” he asked, changing the subject. She gave him a long look but let it go.

“You wake up. Or at least, that’s the theory. I heal the damage, you slide back in. Might take a little while to adjust, given how long you’ve been out of it, but it shouldn’t take long to get your groove back.”

“So you will be healing us, then?” he asked, arching an eyebrow. She rolled her eyes.

“I haven’t spent the past ten years babysitting you two just to have you wind up right back here. That’s not happening.”

“It hasn’t been ten years.”

“Okay, _five_ years.”

“It also hasn’t been five years.”

“It feels like an eternity.”

“Jones.”

“What?” She leaned into the rope and took another breather.

“Thank you.”

“Oh, god, don’t thank me yet. Thanking me now is like a money-back guarantee that something else is going to go terribly wrong.” She dragged her forearm across her face, wiping away the sweat. “Not to mention, I’m sure I’ll do something to make you regret it pretty much as soon as I get bored with hanging out down here.”

“I still want you to know that I appreciate your help,” he said.

“Shhh. Someone’s going to _hear you_ , Coulson. I’m serious. I mean, what about the last few days makes you think you can just say shit like that and nothing bad’s going to happen?” 

“Almost there,” Clint called from below them. She gave a last pull on the rope, dragging him further up.

“What disaster did I miss now?” Clint asked, bracing himself against the dragon’s lower teeth.

Lucy and Phil stared at him, their mouths falling open. Lucy almost lost her grip on the rope. The dying light of the last setting sun glinted off the gold horns on the helmet he was wearing.

“What the fuck?” she hissed.

“Clint?” Phil asked.

“Yeah.” He scrambled off the edge and started stripping the armor off, leaving it in a pile on the floor. “The dragon guy with all the feathers said this was yours. Got pretty insistent about giving it back to you.”

“What dragon guy with all the feathers?” Phil asked sharply, shooting Lucy an exasperated glare.

“Don’t give me that look, Coulson,” she snapped, turning to Clint. “Okay, what dragon guy with all the feathers?”

“The really, really big kind of snake-looking guy with the huge ruff of green feathers. He didn’t exactly introduce himself, Jones.” Clint wriggled out of the harness. “He said you shouldn’t leave your stuff lying around, called me a vassal, and told me to give it back to you.”

“Kind of flashy for you,” Phil remarked.

“Quetzalcohuātl gave you this shit?” Her brow furrowed. How the hell did this qualify as any business of his? How had he even collected it all? Some of it should still have been in a storm drain somewhere.

“You tell me, Jones. Does Quetzalcohuātl match the description? Did you leave this stuff on his front lawn? Is he prone to calling people things like ‘peasant’?”

“Yes, it’s not mine, and I’ve never actually met the dude in person.” She flexed her hands and rubbed her fingers. “But he’s a god, so probably? I mean, they’re usually not super-respectful of random, non-worshipper mortals.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say it’s Asgardian make,” Phil commented. 

Lucy shrugged with studied indifference. “I doubt it. But like I said, it’s not mine, so fuck if I know. Stop fussing with it, Barton. Let’s get a move on.”

“So you’re just going to leave it here?” Clint asked, crossing his arms.

“Okay, have you just not read any fairytales? Fables? Folktales? Myths?” she demanded. He frowned irritably, and she sighed. “Here’s a hint, Barton. When some supernatural rando rolls up to you for no reason and is like ‘Here’s a mysterious pile of gold! Please take it!’, it is invariably a fucking trap. It’s like the trappiest trap ever to trap anybody. You ditch it as soon as possible and run the fuck away. So, with that in view, we’re _ditching it_ and _running away_.”

“If he shows up again, I’m not getting yelled at for not delivering it.”

“If he shows up again, feel free to send him straight to me. I’ve got some other stuff to yell at him back about anyway.” She stretched her shoulders. “Now _come on_. Quickly. Before we all get Midas’s touch or something.”

“What’s so bad about that? Isn’t Midas’s touch a good thing?” Clint asked.

“Oh my fucking...” Lucy rubbed her face. “Coulson, seriously. Assigned reading for everybody when you get back. This is just unacceptable.”

“Starting to care about our welfare, Jones?” Phil asked, getting to his feet. Clint steadied him carefully.

“Starting to have serious concerns about your qualifications at high-level threat-containment. When your people don’t have the brains to not open Pandora’s box, it’s everybody’s problem,” she snorted.

“Pfft. You’re totally starting to like us,” Clint snorted.

“You keep this up, I’m only healing you half way,” Lucy growled, shooting the armor one last glance. She still couldn’t believe her rotten luck. The helm was...distinctive, to say the least. Even a cursory description would confirm everything in Thor’s mind. Not that she had much chance of dissuading him at this point, but hard evidence, confirmed from an outside source, changed the playing field in a way she could have lived without.

“She’s going to heal us after all?” Clint asked quietly.

“That’s what she said,” Phil answered, pitching his voice low.

“I can hear you both,” she called back.

They fell in behind her, muttering a quick conversation that she couldn’t be bothered to pay further attention to. She’d need to make a quick visit to be sure their bodies were whole enough that they’d stick. After that it would be up to them. She hoped they were up for it. Only one way to really find out, though, she thought.

*****

Phil groaned and opened his eyes. Apart from a lingering ache running from his temples to the base of his skull, he felt surprisingly normal. He swallowed carefully and found that he didn’t even have the mouth-full-of-cotton sensation that had accompanied every other incident of him waking up in a hospital. He got his bearings and sat up gingerly. SHIELD medical wing. Two doctors stared at him like they weren’t sure whether to shoot him or clear the room. The window separating the suite from the observation area had been melted to slag quite recently. His left hand closed around the hilt of the dagger he’d pilfered from the heap of armor when Jones wasn’t looking, then relaxed. That could wait.

“What happened--” he started. His voice sounded odd in his ears, and he cleared his throat and tried again. “What happened to the window?”

“A humanoid made of fire,” one of the doctors told him.

“That humanoid made of fire have a name?” he asked.

“Probably, but she didn’t introduce herself.”

“She?”

“An extrapolation based on the lack of,” she coughed, “external male sex characteristics.” 

“I think we can go ahead and confirm the pillar of fire as Lucy Jones, then,” he sighed, twisting and stretching. Everything felt...off. Odd. His voice still sounded strange.

“Agent Barton, may I ask how you’re feeling?” the doctor asked cautiously, her hand straying to one pocket.

Phil frowned. “Excuse me?”

“How are you feeling?” she repeated slowly.

“No, what did you just call me?” he clarified. He looked down at his hands. He blinked a few times, then closed his eyes for a long several seconds. When he opened them, he saw the same thing he had before he’d closed them. Calluses he didn’t have. Scars from injuries he’d never gotten.

“Agent Barton?” the doctor asked, her tone prompting. He’d missed some question or other.

“Goddamit, Jones,” he sighed to himself. “Doctor, there’s been an incident. I’m Agent Coulson.”

“Your personnel files--”

“Yes, doctor, I’m in Barton’s body. Presumably he’s in my body. _Hopefully_ , he’s in my body. Please contact Director Fury or Deputy Director Hill as soon as they’re available.”

“Already done, agent.” She was studying him closely, and he couldn’t blame her. 

This was going to take some explaining. He hoped Dr. Strange would be able to do something once Fury called him in. His gaze drifted from bed to bed. Half the agents who’d been present at the time of the explosion were in the ward. He felt dizzy when he finally located his own body.

“Barton?” he called softly, not wanting to consider the next step if Clint wasn’t there. Jones clearly hadn’t stuck around.

“Muh?” The figure on the bed stirred. Phil rubbed his face. It was unsettling.

“Barton, you with us?”

“Phil? I feel like I cracked my head on something. And where are we...” Clint sat up and stared at him. “I, uh, _what_?”

“Jones,” Phil sighed.

“Oh, _god damn it_. Where is she?” Clint demanded, staring first at his own body and then down at Phil’s.

“Gone.” He pointed to the melted glass. “Possibly for the best, for the time being. Fury’s been notified.”

Clint gave him a belligerent look. “No offense, sir, but I don’t know that this is really the director’s wheelhouse.”

“ _Barton_ ,” he said warningly.

Clint sighed. “Sorry. This is just...unexpected. And unnerving.”

“You understand that we’re going to need to verify both your identities?” the doctor asked.

“Yes, of course.” Phil nodded. Clint frowned and rubbed his--Phil’s--head.

“Can I get an aspirin in the meantime?”

“You’re in pain?” the doctor asked.

“Headache. Everything else is fine,” he said firmly. He slid out of bed and stood, moving experimentally. “Better than fine, actually. Wasn’t your knee acting up before the accident?”

“Yes. Your shoulder’s not giving me any trouble, either.”

Clint ran his fingers through his hair, then stopped and shivered. “This is really, really weird. But I guess I can kind of give her points for trying if she fixed...wait, how’s my back?”

Phil twisted. “Fine.”

Clint threw his hands up. “I no longer know how to feel about this.”

“You’re both experiencing an improvement in symptoms that were present prior to the explosion?” the doctor asked.

“So it would seem.” Phil touched his side gently. “Clint, how are my ribs?”

“Not even bruised.”

“Then it would appear we’re also no longer suffering from the injuries incurred in the explosion, either.”

“I think this might count as a miracle, agents,” she said quietly.

“The person who melted your window is a magician,” Phil explained. “So, the short answer would be that yes, it’s a miracle.”

“I still get to be upset that I’m not in my own body, though, right?” Clint groused.

Phil shrugged. “Doesn’t do you much good if you’re not in the right body to enjoy the upgrades.”

“Right. You get the dagger out?”

Phil held it up, then slowly put it on a nearby table.

“That’s something, at least. You think Thor can ID it?”

“I’d lay money on it,” Phil sighed heavily. “I think the trick is going to be managing the fall-out from not being able to contain her reliably.”

Clint examined Phil’s hands closely. “You think this is over the Pandora’s box joke?”

“I don’t think the Pandora’s box joke helped, no.”

*****

Fury paused, and Hill sat up straighter, her eyes on him. She knew that posture.

“I need you to repeat that, very slowly,” he growled into the comm. There was a long pause before he said, “That’s what I thought I heard you say. I’m on my way. Anything else catches on fire, you call in Strange and the Asgardian. Are we clear?”

He shook his head. Hill tilted her head, and he looked at her for a moment before replying to her unspoken question. “You want the good news or the bad news?”

“Sounds from that like it’s a two-for-one deal,” she said.

“Coulson and Barton are up and walking around.” She relaxed slightly, letting go of a tension she hadn’t quite acknowledged carrying. “In each other’s bodies.”

“...what?”

“The KIA magician, Jones, was apparently involved. And she’s been upgraded from ‘killed in action’ to ‘status unknown.’”

Hill took a deep breath. “If she did it, she can fix it, right? And her being alive and kicking could help with our Asgardian problem.”

“Don’t get your hopes up on either count. She’s a wild card.” Fury shook his head. “Still.”

“We’ve got some of our men back,” Hill finished.

“We’ve got some of our men back,” he agreed.


	49. Chapter 49

Lucy curled herself around a rock outcropping and contemplated what was left of her body. The first step, obviously, was to move it to shallower water, where she wouldn’t have to compensate for the ridiculous pressure of the depths while she was rebuilding. The second step was clearly to give up and go have a drink because sweet merciful Buddha, she was a mess. The next time she had to save the world, she would do it from the comfort of a tank, or perhaps a nuclear sub.

She put a bubble of ice around the half-charred, half-waterlogged remains of her physical self and started moving upwards. A shark brushed close, then veered away, sensing trouble. Once she was done, she’d pop home for a change of clothes and a nice relaxing bender. A cold prickle of doubt crept through her, and she amended her itinerary. _Pop home, check up on Heckle and Jeckle,_ then _go on a nice relaxing bender_. The odds of them having fucked up something as simple as “Make it the next ten feet back into your bodies” were practically nil, but still. She’d hate to have put all that work into getting them back and then have them wind up stuck haunting a ventilator or a battery pack in a SHIELD burn ward. It just wouldn’t do.

The water gradually became brighter, and the faint glow of the sun filtered down from above. She felt warmer and somehow more real. One sun instead of five, and, physically speaking, it was a ball of incandescent gas instead of a pushy god. Far less random mythological nonsense. She let the ice melt and set to work. It was a strange and new thing, both far less and far more like fixing a living body than she would have expected. There was a resilience to her shape that she’d come to accept over years of trying, without luck, to change her form permanently, but she’d always been _in_ it before. Funneling power in from the outside and then watching as her flesh and bone reasserted itself was a novelty. She frowned at the scar on her arm as it darkened and reddened. Surely Hummingbird’s bite shouldn’t be persistent? It had served its purpose. Their business was done.

Lucy slid ephemeral fingers through her ruined hair and smiled slightly as her body’s fingers twitched in response. She was tired, and now that she had a stomach--even if she wasn’t currently using it--she was hungry. She still had to get home. She sheared the long black strands off a few inches from the root, letting the clipped wreck drift away with the current. She could grow it back later, and at least now she wasn’t quite as likely to be mistaken for a drowned rat once she got to shore. She broke the surface and slid back into her shape, fitting back into meat and sinew like a hand filling out a glove. She sucked in a long, deep breath and adjusted her posture, letting herself float on the surface for a few minutes. Everything felt normal, right, as it should be. And she wasn’t just hungry. She was _really_ hungry.

“Time to get home, then,” she muttered to herself. She smiled and snapped her fingers, fading into shadow.

She solidified and opened her eyes with a frown. She was still bobbing peacefully in an ocean. That it was a different one, closer to home, was only marginally placating. She was, after all, not _that_ much closer home. Lucy scowled at the water and recalculated her trajectory. She’d left something out last time, missed some detail. Something wasn’t quite right yet. A gull circled overhead, shrieking for no readily apparent reason. At least, she thought, she wasn’t too very far from shore. The bird looked ill-equipped for long expeditions over water and far more closely resembled the maritime rats-with-wings who infested docks and waterside dumpsters. She treaded water and got her bearings.

A small sea turtle surfaced next to her, took a deep breath, and eyed her thoughtfully. Lucy stared back.

“We got a problem?” she asked tartly, crossing her arms. The scar caught her eye again, and she wiped it away with her thumb, smoothing over the skin and evening out the color.

“Dunno. Don’t usually see too many of you people out here unless there’s a problem,” the turtle answered. She slapped the water with one flipper, splashing Lucy expertly.

“What the fuck?” she demanded, wiping water off her face. The salt stung her eyes.

“You want a ride or not?”

“I didn’t know you were offering,” Lucy grunted. “Also, I’m bigger than you, so I don’t know if you’re really in much of a position to actually make good on that.”

“Pfft. It’s the not the size of the boat, it’s the locomotion in the ocean.” The turtle snapped her beak. “No offense, but primates don’t exactly have the paddles for keeping up with us.”

“So you’re just offering me a ride, just like that.”

“Weeeeeeeeeell, we might want something out of it,” the turtle hedged, diving back under. Two more turtles surfaced, breathing deep and watching her.

“You all want something?” Lucy asked. “Seriously, I haven’t even been back a full day. This is just ridiculous.”

“We don’t want much,” one of them said after a moment.

“Just a little bit of help come hatching time,” the other added.

“Define a little bit of...wait, were you jerks _waiting_ for me?” Lucy demanded.

“No. But you’ve got a reputation.”

“I’ve got a reputation,” she repeated.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. What do you want?”

“We give you a ride to shore, you make sure all our hatchlings get to sea this year.”

“What makes you think I need a ride to shore?” Lucy asked.

“You wouldn’t be here still talking about it if you were in a way to get yourself somewhere,” the second turtle answered.

“I might be,” she snapped, defensive. “As it so happens, I happen to spend a lot of my time standing around arguing with stupid people when the best option would clearly be to leave them to their own devices. It’s actually kind of a problem. I should probably talk to a therapist about it or something.”

One of the turtles clicked her beak and blinked slowly, clearly skeptical.

“You in, or are you going to float here until you wind up in that big patch of things that look like jellies but don’t taste good?” the second turtle asked.

Lucy’s stomach growled. 

“Fine, yes, fuck it, I’m in.” She kicked over to the third turtle and curled her fingers around the little reptile’s carapace. “Let’s go, then.”

“Hold on,” the turtle warned. Lucy snorted but did as she was told, clinging close as they dove beneath the waves.

*****

Tony jerked awake, blinking stupidly at the ocean and trying to remember where he was. Thor was on his feet and pacing like a hound trying to pick up a lost trail.

“Something up, buddy?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

“She has returned,” Thor said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

Tony stopped himself before he could say something terribly impolitic and got to his feet instead. He took his time stretching and trying to work out the kinks in his back before making his way to Thor.

“So what’s the plan?” he sighed, looking out at the water.

“I am unsure,” Thor confessed after a long pause. “I feel as if she is close, but it is difficult to tell quite how close. Or where she is for that matter.”

“So no plan. Okay.” Tony ran his fingers through his hair. Coffee. He needed coffee. “We can work with no plan. We do no plan all the time.”

Thor gave him a long look. “I...would understand if you wish to be absent for this reunion, friend Tony. I thank you for keeping watch with me all this time, but I know that my sister can be difficult.”

Tony snorted. “Don’t even start with that again. We’re a team. If not having a plan is less than ideal, splitting up and not having a plan is enough to give Rogers a conniption fit.”

“The captain is not here, and I assure you that I would not divulge the details to him,” Thor rumbled, smiling. “Thank you once more, friend.”

“You think I’ve got time to get us some coffee?” Tony asked, scanning the horizon again.

“Almost certainly.” Thor sighed. 

“I’ll be back in a few, then.” Tony shook himself, trying to wake up and feeling like he was wading through a thick fog. “Yell if you need anything. Preferably really, really loudly if what you need is back-up.”

“I do not think it will come to that,” he said, shaking his head slowly.

“You say that now, but in my experience, dying or almost dying or whatever this is does not improve people’s tempers,” Tony warned. “You’re sort of the exception, there.”

“Then be quick, my friend, and we will face any danger together,” Thor laughed, smiling affectionately.

“Yeah.” Tony rubbed his eyes again. “Right back at you.”

He trudged off across the sand and through the parking lot. Thor watched him go and looked out over the water again. He’d have felt more at ease if he’d known precisely what he was looking for. Eventually it occurred to him that the waves didn’t look quite right. They were too unchanging, too...solid. Lucy broke the surface and shook her head, grinning like a lunatic. She froze when she saw him.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she groaned. She swam toward shore, and Thor beamed at her until the turtles, row after row after row of them, began surging out of the surf. 

“Out of their way,” she called. “They’re not above biting, and they’ll go through those boots like butter.”

She carefully waded out of the water, avoiding stepping on or being bowled over by turtles only with some difficulty, and he swept her into a tight embrace before she could dodge him.

“You’re back,” he breathed.

“Yeah.”

“I was beginning to think you would not return,” he said thickly. She squirmed, a bright flicker of guilt flaring up.

“Yeah, well.” She scowled.

“You must promise to be more careful in the future,” he murmured. “We cannot keep losing you this way.”

“I’m not exactly in a huge hurry to buy the farm again, myself.” She hunched her shoulders and shoved him away. “Now knock it off. I’m really not in the mood for whatever you think we’re doing here.”

He sighed. “Would you like to borrow my cloak?”

“Um. Is that a resort?” She shaded her eyes and looked past him. “Yeah. Avoiding a public indecency charge would probably be for the best.”

Thor looked away and unfastened his cape, handing it to her without further comment.

“Thank you.” She dodged a particularly aggressive turtle as she wrapped it around herself. “I’ll have it dry-cleaned before I give it back. Promise.”

“Are these yours?” he asked, dancing back as the same turtle reached him and tried to make good on her earlier warning that they could bite through boot leather.

“Nope. Just got a ride with them.” She looked at him. “I’m not going to have a repeat of this with your parents, am I?”

“I had confidence that you would return,” Thor ventured cautiously. She pursed her lips.

“So why bother upsetting them unnecessarily?” she asked.

“Precisely.”

“So this whole unfortunate incident can just be something I don’t get yelled at over by alien royalty.”

“I think I would prefer not to be chastised for delaying the news, as well.”

“We understand each other, then,” Lucy said, inching up the beach. One of the first turtles to arrive had staked out a spot for her nest and was flinging sand at them.

Thor dragged her back into another bearhug, and she rolled her eyes.

“Dude, seriously. Knock it off. I’m not above turning you into a newt.”

“A risk I will gladly run,” he chuckled.

“You say that now, but you probably wouldn’t like being a newt. They look way dumber when they’re trying to swing a hammer around.” She poked him sharply under the ribs, and he jumped and let go. She wriggled her fingers at him threateningly, and he grinned at her. “You’re not even a little intimidated here, are you? I must be losing my edge.”

“It is good to have you back,” he laughed. “We shall have to tell mother something about your hair, though.”

“Okay, look. Your mom needs to understand that she’s your mom, not mine, and that my hair may look ridiculous at the moment, but it’s really not her concern,” Lucy sighed. “And also, this is considered fashionable here.” She smoothed a stray tuft down. “I know this whole thing kind of knocked everybody for a loop a little bit, but it doesn’t magically mean I’m part of the family. Like, I get that you were concerned, but you were concerned based on a faulty premise. Your parents don’t even know me, really, and at this point, with you, I barely qualify as a weird archenemy that you’re too emotionally invested in.”

Thor frowned and opened his mouth to speak. She cut him off with a quick gesture, her eyes narrowing at something over his shoulder. 

“Did you really bring Tony fucking Stark here with you? You did, didn’t you? Jesus, Thor.”

“He has waited patiently with me in an attempt to bring me comfort. It was a most touching gesture,” Thor protested. “You think poorly of him, but he is a true friend.”

He followed her gaze to see Tony trotting back down the beach, gamely balancing two coffee cups and a plain paper bag.

“I told you to yell if you needed me,” Tony shouted, skidding to a stop and glaring at Lucy. “Why are you wearing his cape?”

“My clothes weren’t fire-proof, and it turns out the underwater branches of Macy’s don’t take traveler’s checks.”

“What are you, Rogers’s grandmother? Nobody takes traveler’s checks.” He walked toward them, warily avoiding the turtles and getting pelted with flying sand regardless. “Got yourself an army, have you?”

“First Chelonian Armored Division,” she snorted.

“They bite,” Thor warned dutifully. Lucy snatched one of the cups and the bag from him when one of the turtles demonstrated the last assertion, snapping at his sandals.

“Hey!”

“Hmph yphlf,” she retorted, eating half a donut in one go.

Tony looked at Thor. “You guys already get your Hallmark moment out of the way, then? That was fast.”

Thor shrugged, and she snorted before eating the other half of the donut. Tony sighed and handed Thor the other coffee.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely.

Lucy drained the stolen cup and looked around before starting on the second donut. “Is there like a taco truck around here or something?”

“You want a taco? Those don’t really go with donuts unless you’ve got the munchies, Jones.”

“No, I want an entire truck’s worth of tacos. You know, if at all humanly possible.” She swallowed a mouthful of cruller. “Taco trucks typically still have more or less a truck’s worth of tacos this early in the day.”

She deftly shielded the rest of the donut from a flying spray of sand.

“That would be ambitious even for Volstagg,” Thor commented. They both raised their eyebrows, and he coughed. “Or perhaps not.”

“Why don’t you just magic yourself up some tacos, and maybe some clothes while you’re at it, and leave us out of it?” Tony asked sourly. “Maybe if you get really ambitious, you could replace the coffee and pastries you just stole.”

“My magic’s a bit on the blink at the moment.” She shrugged. “Just going and buying them would be way easier.”

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...”

“Yeah, yeah. You can’t get fooled again,” she finished, nailing the impersonation. 

“Okay, that? Is terrifying,” Tony muttered.

“I didn’t say it’s gone, I said it’s on the blink,” she grunted, finishing the cruller. “I mean, I could try, but don’t start yelling when we wind up buried under a twenty-foot tamale and it’s raining coffee.”

“Can we have this discussion somewhere I’m not getting-- _ow!_ \--beat up by evolutionary dead-ends?” he groused, crouching and rubbing his heel. The turtle that had hit him with a flipper gave him a dirty look. “I didn’t move! You hit me!” he told her.

Thor had taken the opportunity to inch closer to Lucy, and she glared at him when he finally put his hand on her shoulder. That it was oddly comforting made her even more irritable, and the appropriated pastry had barely put a dent in her appetite.

“This does call for a proper feast,” he said, his tone qualifying as sly for him.

“Stop that. You look like a golden retriever trying to have an idea when you’re plotting things,” Lucy sighed. She licked the icing from her fingers and tasted sea salt along with it. She started picking her way slowly through the swarming mass of sea life, Thor following carefully on her heels. She glanced at Tony. “Let me borrow your phone?”

“No. You’re just going to reset the password to something embarrassing again.” He frowned at her. “Also, why?”

“I _probably_ wouldn’t do that,” she said. “Come on, just for a second.”

“No.” He yelped when another turtle hit him. “What the hell? Their flippers are like oars. I thought sea turtles were supposed to be kind of, I don’t know, _cuddly_.”

“I really don’t know where you got that impression,” Lucy sighed. “I mean, how much structural integrity would their flippers have have if they were floppy or squishy or anything?”

“Don’t get snotty with me about engineering,” he snapped. “But look at penguins. They do okay, and they’re extremely huggable.”

Lucy stared at him. “They’re damp, and they stink, and honestly, have you ever been hit with a penguin flipper? Not fun.”

“Oh, like you have?”

“Yes. That’s like... _it made the papers_ ,” she sputtered. “For _weeks_.”

“Where, Australia? The south pole?”

“The greater Austro-New Zealand area, yes.”

Thor’s brow furrowed. “You started a fight with those small birds who cannot fly?”

“It’s complicated,” Lucy said quickly. “And do _not_ feel sorry for them, they can totally hold their own.”

“Against a magician?” Another turtle clipped him on the front of the ankle. “Son of a--Can you please ask them to stop doing that?”

“You’re almost clear, but for the low price of five minutes of phone time, I can totally ask them to stop doing that,” she said, smiling cheerfully.

“No.” Tony jumped over the last turtle between him and uninfested beach. “How is this even a viable nesting strategy, anyway? They’re just getting in each other’s way.”

“Take it up with them, if you feel like getting whacked another dozen or so times,” she suggested. “Phone?”

“N-O. No. I’ve met toddlers who were less persistent than you.”

Lucy reached out absently to steady Thor when he tripped over an abandoned half-dug hole. They both looked at her, and she colored slightly and dropped her hand. “Okay, fine. No phone-borrowing. I get it. At least tell me if Coulson and Barton made it back okay?”

“Back from where?” Tony asked, tilting his head. 

Thor looked at her, confused. “Indeed. From whence?”

“Uh, the underworld? Being dead? Or I guess dead-ish, but I mean, splitting hairs.” Lucy shrugged.

“Wait, what?” Tony demanded. Thor’s confusion deepened.

“What do you mean, what?” She glared at him. “Did Coulson and Barton--”

“Just back up something like four or five steps, here. I feel like we’re having radically different conversations. Why would you take Coulson and Hawkeye with you on your magical mystery tour of the land of the dead?” he hissed.

Lucy groped for a way to answer his question, glancing from him to Thor and back, before settling on throwing up her hands and stalking off. “I’m too hungry to deal with your stupidity right now, Stark. Maybe flip through your memos from the past couple of weeks and catch up. I’m going to go get something to eat.”

“Wait, wait, wait. You can’t just say something like that and then stomp off!” Tony scrambled after her. “What happened to Clint and Phil?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that big blue death-cube you guys were dicking around with got a little too shook up and took out the lab? That ring any bells?” she snapped, not slowing.

“We have been here awaiting your arrival for some time,” Thor soothed, lengthening his stride to keep pace with her. “We have been largely cut off from our companions, well away from any large cubes of death, but there has certainly been no word that anyone was injured.”

“Yeah, well,” she said. “They tried crashing with me, and then I shipped them home.”

“Is that magician-speak for ‘Clint and Phil died’?” Tony asked flatly.

“How is this not already something you know, Stark? I mean, seriously. Your teammates got blown up and comaed up so hard I had to put them back, and you’re looking at me like I just announced that the moon landing was faked by aliens. Considering I was dead at the time, I don’t see how I should be more in the loop than you.”

“But surely if such a thing had happened, we’d have been informed,” Thor protested gently.

“And yet here you are, giving me stupid looks when I tell you about it,” Lucy grunted. “Hey, look. Food truck. Let’s go.”

“Nick fucking Fury,” Tony muttered savagely. “Phil and Clint really died? They really died.”

“They really got fucked up so bad that their souls fell out,” Lucy clarified. “I didn’t have to dig them up or pry open any coffins.”

“But you restored them, as you did me,” Thor said.

“Yes. I think.”

“You _think_?” Tony shouted, turning on her. Her eyes narrowed to emerald slits, but he held his ground. Thor separated them carefully.

“I’m sure my sister--”

“Don’t,” Lucy hissed, angling around him to meet Tony’s glare. “I would like to be fucking _sure_ before I go around saying I totally fucking did it, Stark. So I would like to _talk_ to them. Which is why I wanted to borrow your fucking phone.”

“I’m calling Fury.”

“Yes. That is an _excellent_ fucking idea. You fucking do that.” She brushed past him and made a beeline for the cart. “Let me know what sort of bullshit he comes up with. Could be useful in the future.”

“Good luck getting tacos with no money, Jones!” Tony called after her, pulling his phone out. “You’re not cute enough to get that much free food just by smiling at people.” Thor winced slightly, and Tony sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “She took my wallet, didn’t she?”

Thor nodded and gave him an apologetic look as he followed her. “I will repay you when we return to our headquarters, friend Tony.”

“Just make sure she only keeps the cash? Pepper’s going to kill me if she has to cancel another set of smart-cards.”

Thor nodded, and Tony shook his head. 

“Nick fucking Fury,” he grunted, pulling up the director’s number.


	50. Chapter 50

Tony hung up, sighed, and looked around for Thor. They needed to get back stateside, and the sooner the better. He spotted the god trying to fold himself into a rickety chair at a sidewalk cafe a block away and made his way toward him. He almost walked past Lucy without noticing her.

“Well?” she demanded, making him jump. He stared at her for a second. She was wearing a bikini under board shorts and a tank top, flip-flops, and a baseball cap. 

“Well, go pick out a different outfit. I’m not paying for you to look like an incompetent KGB agent dressed up as a tourist in an ‘80s movie. This is just...” he sputtered, throwing his hands up. “I refuse to be seen with you looking like this. I feel like if I ever wind up going back in time, the first thing I need to do is let past-me know to treasure the times you bothered putting on a shirt before showing up.”

She shifted the flat of tacos under one arm and took a bite of the one she was holding. “Technically, he’s paying,” she nodded to Thor, “and this is what passes for clothes this close to the beach, so fuck off. And you know damn well I was asking about Fury, Curly, and Moe.”

“It was my wallet you stole,” he reminded her, trying for a taco. She deftly maneuvered the box away. “And there’s no way you’re going to eat all of those.”

“Watch me,” she retorted, her sunglasses sliding down her nose. “And he’s paying you back, so hush.”

“He told you about that?”

Lucy shrugged. “He didn’t have to. It’s just him. It’s what he does.”

“If you say so.” He gave her a measuring look.

“You’ve never noticed?” she asked, surprised.

Tony glanced at Thor, who was waving him over. “You know, he’s been camped out on that beach pretty much since you fell off the grid in that fight. Because you mentioned a dream to him. Once.”

She flashed him a cold smile and pushed her sunglasses back up. 

“I’m not above texting Pepper the date, time, and location of the next time you’re going to do something monumentally stupid,” she said cheerily.

“Touched a nerve, did I?” he asked.

“Keep it up, and I’m copying Rhodes on it.”

“So that’s a yes.” He plucked burrito from the edge of the flat, and she snatched it back.

“That’s for _him_ , and spill it. What’d Fury say?”

“That you’re grounded,” he said.

“Grounded,” she echoed.

“In supervillain time-out.”

“Is the phrase you’re looking for ‘under arrest’?” Lucy snorted.

“No, because that would apparently confuse and enrage the Asgardians. So, uh, you’re grounded until Fury can figure out how to properly leverage something or other.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Has Fury been feeling okay lately? No sharp blows to the head or unexplained evil cackling and forgetting things he knows or random cranial implants or anything?” Lucy asked.

“Well, the parts where he just swore at me a lot sounded pretty much spot-on for him, and he still thinks you’re a sorry excuse for a magician whose primary value is as alien-bait, so I think it was really him.” Tony gave her his best fake, board-meeting smile. “Though now that you mention it, that’s a fairly universally-held opinion, so it doesn’t necessarily mean much.”

She put the taco in her mouth and flipped him off with her now-free hand.

“Real lady-like, Jones,” he snorted. She took a bite and told him to go fuck himself around a mouthful of food.

“What did the director have to say?” Thor asked intently. Tony flopped down next to him, and Lucy slid the flat onto the table. The waiter glared at her until she ordered three pitchers of beer.

“Is now really the time to be drinking?” Tony grunted.

“If you have to ask that, the answer is yes,” she retorted. “Now, come on. Out with it.”

Tony shrugged, managing to steal a taco. “I asked about Phil and Clint and the cube, and he swore at me a lot.”

“Like, in a meaningful way indicating guilt or an ongoing emergency, or just like he normally does when you know shit you shouldn’t?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t think you understand how upset he gets when I know things I shouldn’t,” Tony hedged.

“Indeed. He was quite put out the last time you complained of the cafeteria’s lunch schedule before it was published,” Thor said. “It was a most disproportionate response.”

“So you spent, what, an hour getting called a fucking prick who ought to be fucking nationalized and/or deported to fucking Pluto, and you got no new information out of it aside from the fact that he thinks grounding me is going to work,” she said.

Tony glared at her. “He did _not_ threaten to nationalize me. But he was particularly insistent that we get you onto the helicarrier post-haste, so....”

“That shows a particularly ballsy conviction that I’m above completely trashing it,” Lucy interrupted, frowning.

Thor gave her a long-suffering look. “You are.”

“I’m not, though. I’ve been very good the past few,” she paused and waved a hand, “however fucking long it’s been since I’ve done anything fun. There’s only so much longer I can go before an opportunity presents itself.”

“Like an opportunity to crash something the size of Atlanta into a mountain while you’re still aboard?”

“If you’re not taking chances, you’re not living,” she chuckled.

“Be good,” Thor said firmly.

“Is the next monumentally stupid thing I do going to be taking you to the helicarrier?” Tony asked irritably. Lucy nudged a pitcher toward him.

“Drink up, or you won’t have anything to blame it on,” she said.

“I don’t _need_ anything to blame it on if I’m following Fury’s directives,” he pointed out. “It’s all on him at that point.”

“I still can’t believe he wouldn’t tell you how Barton and Coulson are doing,” Lucy sighed, flicking a bit of tomato back into a taco before picking it up.

“Have you _met_ him? Of course he wouldn’t,” Tony grunted.

She arched an eyebrow. “Well, I mean, aside from a few cocktail parties, some defense contract lobbying, and that one time I tried to court Hill, we really haven’t spent that much time together.”

“You never mentioned courting Agent Hill,” Thor said, surprised. 

Tony rubbed his temples. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“Of course I’m kidding, Stark. Supervillain, remember? I can honestly say that I have flat-out, hands-down, absolutely, positively spent as little time around SHIELD agents of any rank as humanly possible. Like, why don’t I just go spend some quality free time hanging out with cops while I’m at it?”

“You’re having lunch with half the Avengers,” he pointed out.

“I’m having a stupid conversation with like twenty percent of the Avengers.” She glanced at Thor. “And apparently I’m grounded instead of under arrest because Fury doesn’t want to upset your parents.”

Thor’s brows furrowed. “I am unsure of what that means.”

“How do you figure twenty percent?” Tony demanded.

“In big trouble?” She pursed her lips. “Like, uh, confined to quarters? Is that a thing Asgard has?” She drained one of the pitchers. “And how do you figure it’s not twenty percent? You are aware you don’t count as more than one Avenger, right?”

“Your math is off, is what I’m saying.”

“But Director Fury was most reassuring that you would remain--” Thor jumped. “Friend Tony, why are you kicking me? That was clearly deliberate.”

“He’s kicking you because he doesn’t think you should finish that statement. It’s a thing that super-mature earthlings do to try and get people’s attention surreptitiously.” She glanced at Tony. “Which is just tragically interesting.” She started counting on her fingers. “Anyway, there’s you two, Captain Hotpants, Wasp and Pym, Widow and Hawkeye, Coulson--”

“Coulson’s not an Avenger,” Tony said, glaring meaningfully at Thor.

“I don’t understand why I shouldn’t say--” Thor frowned. “I must sincerely ask that you stop that before you break one of your toes and cause Pepper and Jane to become most cross with me on your behalf. And it is behavior ill-becoming a friend and comrade.”

“You two are smooth as gravel, you know that?” Lucy said with a shrug. “And sure he is. He’s the paperwork Avenger. Anyway, Rhodes--”

“Still technically military,” he snapped desperately.

“Technically, isn’t Rogers still in the Army, then?”

“I do not see the need for such secrecy,” Thor said carefully, eyeing Tony. He glanced at Lucy. “And you do not seem as concerned with this as you might be.”

“Well, I don’t really care what designation you guys are operating under? If the military wants to double-dip, that’s not exactly my business.”

“That is clearly not what I meant,” he said, exasperated. She shrugged. 

“I’m incapable of caring too much about anything right this second.” She raised a pitcher. “Maybe once I’m marginally less hungry and in need of a bit less beer.”

“Maybe you should at least make the effort to care?” Tony suggested.

“Says the man who was just kicking a somebody under a table like a bad sitcom to keep me from knowing I needed to care about something,” she snapped. “Dude, I was dead less than twenty-four hours ago. I get that you guys are capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time, but some of us are just poor, simple, salt of the earth types who take a while to readjust to this whole thing, and you _really_ need to stop looking at me like that, Thor.”

“This is not a game,” he growled, hurt written on his face.

Lucy took a deep breath and finished the taco she was eating, then carefully wiped her hands on a napkin. 

“You want to give us a minute here, Stark?” she asked, her tone deceptively light.

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s the best--”

“Please, friend Tony,” Thor said quietly. Tony frowned and leaned forward, his hand on Thor’s arm.

“This is a bad idea,” he said, his voice pitched low.

“Perhaps,” he agreed.

“Okay, so we’re on the same page. I’m not going anywhere.”

Lucy tilted her head, her green eyes hard.

“Tony,” Thor sighed. “ _Please_.”

Tony stared at him for a few seconds before getting to his feet and stalking off, muttering under his breath.

“Was his absence really necessary?” Thor asked heavily, pushing his hair out of his face.

“Oh, you wanna keep getting kicked? Fine. Do it on your own time,” she snapped, her tone flattening and her eyes narrowing. “Here’s the thing, and I need you to pay attention, and I need you to actually hear what I’m saying. I _died_. And then I spent most of that time chaperoning your douchebag, pain-in-the-ass friends around the underworld to get them back up here. Don’t ask me why. It started out as this sort of misbegotten hybrid of misplaced affection and love of a good challenge, but I’m not even sure at this point if it wound up qualifying as blind arrogance or sheer folly. Regardless, it was _quite difficult_. Then I spent no small amount of energy turning my _burned corpse_ into something capable of life again. As I said, less than a day ago, in fact. I have more or less no patience whatsoever left.” She took a deep breath. “So, whatever dumbass deal Fury made with you or your parents or who the fuck ever and now may or may not be trying to renege on? I do not have the energy or the inclination to give a shit about right this second. And I’m really not above going and hiding out in a cave in the desert for like five years until you all get super-bored and give up, so keep that in mind when you’re triangulating exactly how much this is liable to piss me off when I do get up the energy to care about it.”

“I see.”

“Good.” She sat back and rubbed her hair. It still felt distractingly strange, not having the weight of it or the long braid resting on her neck and back. “I’m sure we’ll be back to our regularly-scheduled mutual sabotage in no time, but for now I need you to just, I don’t know, stop having ideas for a while. Or something.”

“I am sorry.” He shook his head. “Just...please do not run away again.”

She grunted in response, then sighed. “You think Stark was on the level about Fury not telling him anything about Coulson and Hawkeye?”

“Of course.”

“Then I guess we’re off to the helicarrier,” she sighed. He smiled, and she rolled her eyes. “I don’t like leaving things undone, this is going to bother me if I don’t see it through, and if something _is_ wrong, it usually gets harder to fix the longer it’s left to fester.”

“Regardless, on behalf of my comrades, thank you.” His smile faded slightly. “I will handle Fury, if need be.”

“What did I just say about not getting any ideas for a while?”


	51. Chapter 51

Lucy sucked at her teeth and looked around the cabin.

“Stop it,” Tony grumbled, tossing his luggage down and flopping into a seat.

“Stop what?” she asked.

“Judging me.” He fidgeted for a few seconds before getting back to his feet and pacing.

“You’re the one who had fucking stripper poles installed on his private jet. I’d think you were immune to judgment at this point,” she snorted. “And I’m not stopping it unless you stop it.”

“Stop what?” he sighed.

“Trying to figure out if your PA’s clothes would fit me. I’m not rolling up onto the helicarrier looking like your butler.”

“I wasn’t,” he protested. “ _And_ she’s my CEO now _and_ they probably would _and_ it’s better than rolling up onto the helicarrier looking like an extra from _Jaws_.”

“Matter of opinion, dude.” Lucy glanced at him. “You gonna stow that in an overhead compartment?”

“You a stewardess now?”

She rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to be a stewardess to not want to take a suitcase full of power armor straight to the face in the event of turbulence.”

He sighed theatrically and nudged it under a seat. “Happy now, _mom_?”

“Do you give Rogers half this much shit?” she asked nonchalantly, looking out the window. Thor waved from the tarmac, and she stifled the urge to wave back. _What the fuck is wrong with me today?_

“Why? Plotting to drive a wedge between us based on me having a problem with authority? Because you’re a little behind the curve, there.”

“Just trying to figure out how many of those times he’s bonked you with the shield were genuinely accidental, that’s all,” she said, shrugging cheerfully.

Tony pursed his lips. “Wow. Got that out of your system, then?”

“Just getting started.”

“Okay, seriously, though, I’m pretty sure some of Pepper’s stuff would fit you.”

“And I’m pretty sure this is just my new, like, _idiom_.” She slicked her hair back and popped her sunglasses up. “I’m gonna call myself Beach Bum. My signature moves’ll be getting sand in your couch and never leaving your guest house.” She made a hang-ten gesture at him.

“You are the most undignified person I’ve ever let on my plane. And I have ferried congressmen around in this thing. I hope you appreciate that,” Tony grumbled. “Oh my god, what is keeping him? Is he going to let every single one of those baggage handlers give him their number? He has a girlfriend, for fuck’s sake.”

“Has somebody explained that they’re trying to have sex with him?” Lucy asked, fishing a box of cigars out of an amenities compartment. “Or have you guys been letting him just like friendzone half of the Americas?”

“I think that’s the sort of thing the SHIELD acculturation department is supposed to handle? And in his case it’s most like feastzoning.” He frowned. “Which, in retrospect, would actually account for how every post-battle dinner he’s at somehow turns into a huge party with every hero in the tri-state area. God damn it.” Tony pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you have any idea how expensive those cigars are?”

“No, and neither do you.” She smiled thinly at him and lit one.

“What I’m trying to say is that those are not for you, so put the rest of them away. Shouldn’t you be lapsing into a food coma or something?”

“Nah. I mean, if anything, I’m wired. Jazzed. Ready to fucking _do_ this thing.” She waved her hands at him and grinned. She wasn’t actually lying. Now that she’d had a chance to eat and dry out and get grounded again, she could feel the crackle and hum of power under her skin. Raw, restless, directionless power.

“Fly in a plane for four hours?”

She shrugged. “Whatever. At this rate it’ll be ‘wait for Thor for four hours’ and then ‘fly for another four hours’ and then cap it off with ‘get yelled at by Fury for four hours.’ All of which I am fucking _stoked_ about doing.”

“Well, if you’re feeling that productive, he could yell at us while we’re en route. Two birds with one stone,” he pointed out sourly. “I could put him on the big screen, and we could all get properly enraged by the satellite delay.”

“Is this thing going to be able to take off with the hammer on board? Isn’t that thing like the weight of a million elephants or something?” 

“Why are you asking me? Isn’t magic your department?” he demanded.

“It’s weird alien extradimensional magic, though.” She made a face. “And I kind of assumed you had some fucking experience with it on planes.”

“It has yet to interfere with the take-off of a plane, though he’s fried more than his share of instrument panels.”

“Well, that’s comforting.”

“ _You can fly_ ,” Tony grunted. “Right? I mean, you know, ish? A rough approximation?”

“A rough approximation of up yours, Stark.”

Tony stuck his head out the door. “Thor, buddy, you think you can join us any time soon? I need you to run interference with your horrible sister.”

“Would you stop encouraging him?” Lucy hissed

“To get on the plane? I thought you wanted to get going,” Tony said.

“With this sister bullshit. We’re not related,” she retorted.

“Try telling him that.”

“I have been?” She kicked her shoes off and sprawled out across two of the seats. “In case you haven’t noticed, Asgardians apparently aren’t that big on internalizing shit they don’t want to hear.”

“And technically you weren’t related before, but you know, you were still, uh….”

Lucy arched an eyebrow in silent question.

“Gimme a second. I’m trying to think of a way to frame this argument that doesn’t sound unfrozen-’40s-captain levels of ridiculous,” he muttered.

“Take your time. I imagine you’re going to need some diagrams to make ‘time-traveling post-adoption reincarnation’ sound like a reasonable explanation for anything,” she said, puffing on the cigar. She looked around the cabin again. _Catching a ride with an Avenger to the helicarrier to make sure a couple of nuisance SHIELD agents are all right. This is definitely not how I saw my life going._

“You know, when you put it like that, it actually reminds me that I have footage of one of my robots getting into a fire-extinguisher fight with an extinct animal because you’re a time-traveling irresponsible pet owner.”

“And?”

“And I don’t need to make it sound reasonable, I just need to make it sound more reasonable than _that_.” He rubbed his eyes. “Can you please ask him to get a move on? We sit on this runway any longer, traffic control’s going to want another bribe.”

“And that’s a problem for you now?” she asked. “Maybe putting someone responsible in charge of the company might have been a bad move, personally speaking.”

He glared at her. “Pepper has not cut me off. She’s very supportive of my...hobbies.”

“Your PA/CEO/girlfriend is very supportive of your efforts to smash yourself into something at mach 2.”

“Oh, go to hell.” He threw his hands up. “It is not a problem monetarily, no, is what I’m saying. But...ethically? Morally? What’s the word for when you don’t want to give somebody any more of your money because they were a huge prick about it the first time?”

“Spite?” She shrugged. “Hang on a second.” She raised her voice and called, “Oh, hey, I’m about to do a really awesome huge crime that will make me happy and rich and put me back on the map forever! If anything were to go wrong, it would suck massive balls!”

“What are you _doing_?” Tony demanded, staring at her.

“You ever do that thing where you stand in front of a mirror and say ‘Bloody Mary’ three times?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

She rolled her eyes, then laughed sharply when Thor came bounding up the steps and Tony almost jumped out of his skin.

“What merriment have you been making in my absence?” he said, beaming.

“If you’re done making friends with the locals, we should probably get going,” Lucy said, nodding to Tony. “Stark’s getting a little antsy.”

“Indeed. As ever, the people of this fair town are good-hearted and true, but we should take our leave.” He clapped Tony on the shoulder and settled next to Lucy too close for her liking. She sighed when he put his arm across the back of the seat, blowing a careful smoke ring at Tony. 

“Friend Jan says that those are most detrimental to your health,” he chided gently.

A few choice retorts flitted through Lucy’s mind. She jerked a thumb at Tony. “They’re his.”

“I’m going to go tell the pilot we can get this show on the road,” he said brightly, ignoring Thor’s frown and shooting a murderous look at Lucy.

“Will you stay, after you’ve seen to my friends?” Thor asked softly, once Tony was out of earshot.

“Nope. I need to get straightened out before I make any long-term plans and/or deal with institutionalized government-sponsored hypocrisy.” 

“You could stay with Jane and her companions.”

“I cannot even begin to describe what an incredibly fucking bad idea that would be,” she grunted, looking around for an ashtray. The engines kicked into life, and Thor yawned. She gave up and flicked the ash into nonexistence. “And maybe if you want to stay out of the doghouse with your girlfriend, avoid offering her couch-space to random magicians?”

“You are not a random magician, you are my sister,” he said firmly. “And I trust Sif to keep you from doing anything too annoying.”

“That’s a bad bet, dude.”

“You underestimate her,” Thor protested. Lucy shrugged, equally unwilling to argue the point or let him think she agreed. “Besides which, she is most eager to speak with you, especially now that your obligation is discharged.”

“Is ‘speak with’ some bizarre Asgardian euphemism for ‘punch in the face’? Because I’m pretty sure that’s what she actually wants to do.”

“She said she had a matter of some urgency to discuss with you,” he told her. “She did not elaborate.”

“Yeah, she wants to hit me. No dice.” Lucy drummed her fingers. She needed to find a new ring. Her hand looked strangely bare without one.

“I wish you would reconsider,” he murmured, yawning again. “Mother and father wish to see you, and I think you would like Jane immensely.”

“Thor, I’m going to make sure Coulson and Barton aren’t stuck in a weird and particularly-evil new SHIELD superweapon that’s powered by souls, and then I’m going to go set something on fire. Maybe chill with the invitations to somebody else’s Sunday dinner for a week or two.” She cracked her knuckles.

“She’s got a point, big guy,” Tony said, brandishing a pair of glasses. “Anybody else for champagne? Going once, going twice--”

“What are you celebrating?” Lucy demanded suspiciously. 

He popped the cork and started pouring. 

“Here’s to family.” He passed a flute to Thor. “And here’s to setting things on fire.” He passed a flute to Lucy, who eyed him closely while she took it. “And here’s to not setting foot on another beach for at least a year.” He raised the bottle in a toast and fell back as the jet began taxiing down the runway.

Thor raised his glass and elbowed Lucy until she grudgingly did the same.

“You just get some good news, Stark?” she asked.

“Stock prices are up, my girlfriend is beautiful, and Fury would like you to write a letter of apology to the yeti government for your role in the trashing of their Antarctic meteorological outpost.”

“You people and those fucking yetis,” Lucy groaned. “You know I know jackshit about any fucking yetis, right?”

“Fury’s still asking for a letter of apology,” Tony said smugly.

Lucy drained her glass as they lifted off. Thor settled more comfortably next to her, and Tony stretched.

“I’m not apologizing. I may have fucked up their weather station, but unless they don’t live on-planet, I saved their asses. They write me a thank-you note, and I’ll consider magnanimously offering my condolences on the loss of their facility.”

“Granted, I’m not really an expert, but I don’t think that’s how it works,” Tony said slowly.

“Well, I am an expert, and it is.” 

“You’re an expert on apologizing? Since when?”

“No, I’m an expert in bullshit, politically-expedient, pro-forma apologies.” She tapped her nails on her glass and looked around. Tony grudgingly offered the bottle, and she wrinkled her nose. “Gross.”

“It’s Dom. You’re not allowed to call Dom Perignon gross. Especially not when you’re dressed like a hobo.”

“Are you high?” She pointed at the bottle. “It’s not even the right shape. It’s an Imperial. From the taste, I’d say the Ice Imperial. And even if it _were_ Dom Perignon, it’s covered in Avenger-spit, which is gross.”

“Since when do you know about champagne? I have been to your house. You serve pumpkin pie out of a can and something that was probably jello salad.”

“I would _never_. ” She glared at him. “And there are certain cliches about how supercriminals celebrate their dastardly deeds that happen to be more than a little true, and it’s considered poor form to pass on a toast just because tequila and a blunt are more fun. I can also tell you more than any human being should rightly know about sterlet caviar, because I swear to god, every Russian supervillain ever to threaten the west with nuclear annihilation has the weirdest bug up their ass about fish eggs.”

Tony picked at the label, which peeled off cleanly. “God damn it. Why would Pepper do that?”

“Because it’s gauche to get trashed on super-expensive champagne unless you’re a rapper deliberately making a political statement out of re-appropriating the racist over-class’s status markers?” Lucy suggested. She started to get up and realized that Thor was leaning on her, fast asleep. “What the fuck, dude?”

“He’s been awake for about a week straight. Because he’s been worried about you. Cut him some slack,” Tony snapped, picking at the real label as if he hoped it was just an elaborate joke.

She sighed and nudged him into a more comfortable-looking position. His hand curled around her arm, and she caught the edge of bright-colored emotions flickering through his exhausted mind. Relief, comfort, hope...she shook her head. _Idiot. Loyal, impossible idiot._

“You want to be a dear and get me a new bottle of not-Dom, or do I have to magic one up in the middle of your plane?” she asked, shaking her empty glass at him. “Keeping in mind that the last time I tried to make a bottle of carbonated beverage appear out of thin air, the clean-up was a _real_ pain in the ass.”

He rolled his eyes but got her her own bottle. They drank in silence until they were well and truly over water, all hint of land left behind. Lucy let her consciousness unspool slightly, taking in the hum of the water and the minds living under it and the vibration of the land. It was good to be home, very good, even if undercutting everything was the steady golden pulse of Thor’s need.

“You know, there are people out there who’d kill for what you’ve got,” Tony said abruptly, nodding at the god sleeping on her shoulder.

“Bitchin’ magic powers?” she snorted, grinning at him. She let her smile drop. “Yeah, I _know_. I’ve got a fucking photo album full of people making very surprised faces after they took a shot at it.”

“Not what I meant,” he said, shaking his head. “People who love you enough to put up with all the shit you shovel on them _for_ loving you.”

Lucy shook her head. “They don’t love me, Stark. I mean, yes, they do.” She stopped for a second, probing at the thought like a sore tooth. It was a thorny thing to work around, a difficult thing to handle. It had so much in common with real love, she hadn’t quite made the distinction before. It bled into-- _was bleeding into_ , she corrected herself--real love. “But they love me for what I’ve got on offer, not who I am. It’s like...fuck, I don’t know. I mean, anyone would.”

“Way off base there, princess,” Tony snorted.

“Yeah?” she laughed. 

“I’ve got a whole contact list full of people who think you can go fuck yourself.”

“Including you?”

“Would I love a magic-abusing sociopath? Can’t say as I would.” He tipped his bottle up, swallowing the last of it.

She smiled gently and softened her expression. “Even if I fixed your heart so you didn’t _need_ the arc reactor?” Tony stared at her, and she tilted her head and dropped her voice a little.

“You couldn’t.”

“No? Just like I couldn’t fix Barton’s arm? Of course I could. Snap of my fingers and a wave of my hand, and you could take or leave the generator. You’d be okay without it, if you ever decided you didn’t want to use it anymore.” She laughed warmly. “What if I made Pepper bulletproof, too? You know I can do things like that. You’ve seen me do it.” He swallowed hard, the color starting to drain from his face. She clicked her tongue and held his gaze, carefully faking a thoughtful expression. “And what if I made Rhodes invulnerable, while I was at it? You’d never have to lose anyone you loved, ever again.” She let her smile flatten and chill. “How ‘bout then?”

“Get thee behind me, Satan,” Tony gritted, shaking his head abruptly. “Fucking hell.”

“More or less,” Lucy agreed.

“You are _the devil_.”

“That, not so much,” she chuckled.

“Fuck you,” he growled, opening another bottle, his face still pale.

“Your hands’re shaking, champ. You want me to do that?” she offered.

“I want you to be quiet for the rest of the flight.”

“Not happening. But, as I was saying, they love me for what I can give them. It’s not the same thing.”

“How would _you_ know?” he asked bitterly.

“My family was great, Stark,” she told him. “I mean, a little fucked, yeah, but most families are. That’s life. They still loved me, and I loved them. It was a real thing.” She brushed her fingers lightly over Thor’s hair and sighed. “He loved his brother. Again, a little fucked, maybe a little more than a little fucked, given the whole attempted-murder thing, but what are you going to do with royal aliens? But I’m not his brother, and the only thing he can really love me for is that illusion that everything can go back to the way it was. The possibility that I can make it not so. The punchline where I go ‘Ta-da! It was all a joke! Everything’s fine!’ and maybe jump out of a fucking cake or something. Whatever the equivalent of the big reveal is in Asgard.”

Tony rubbed his face and looked out the window.

“Incidentally, if you tell him I let him sleep on my shoulder, I’ll turn you into a pig.”

“You’re not firing on all cylinders, and you’re still making threats,” he muttered. “Cute.”

She narrowed her eyes at him and stretched out her free hand, waving her fingers at him. “Into a pig!”

He looked down at himself, shook his head, and laughed. “Nice. Real nice.”

“Yeah?” She cocked her head. “When’s Pepper’s birthday?”

“Um...August. I think. What does that have to do with anything?”

She blew on her nails and buffed them on hair tank top. “Still got it.”

He started to say something, then stopped and rolled his eyes. “Fucking _seriously_?”

“More than one kind of pig, isn’t there?” she shot back, wiggling her eyebrows.

“You need to not talk to me again until we touch down. I mean, that’s just honestly the worst supervillain joke I’ve ever heard, and that is including the time Hank went a little nuts and spent a couple of weeks trying to beat everyone up just to prove he could, and all this is coming on top of the weird mind-fuck you just tried to pull. One more thing, and I’m not above tossing you right out of the plane.”

Lucy snorted and leaned back into the seat, her attention straying to the little tears and knots in the energy flow below them. So many tiny little things that needed fixing, or tweaking, or helping, just ever so slightly. It wouldn’t take much just to nudge things along. Just a little, just a tiny bit of pressure on the other end of the scale. She smiled to herself and closed her eyes. What could it hurt?


	52. Chapter 52

Fury stared at the read-out and shook his head. Tony fidgeted, and Thor shifted his weight so that he was closer to Lucy in what she was sure had been an attempt at subtlety.

“I _had_ a damned good speech prepared,” he sighed. “Full of excellent points on the nature of morality, unexpected moments of pathos, and a really persuasive closer.” He shook his head again. “Would it have killed you two to keep her from fucking up the western hemisphere long enough for me to deliver it?”

“Fucking up?” she echoed, her eyebrows climbing. “I was fixing things, you one-eyed son of a bitch. _You’re welcome._ ”

“When you fixing thing puts over a hundred incidents on SHIELD’s radar--and that number is still climbing, by the way,” he growled at Tony, “while you’re in SHIELD’s custody, it’s known as fucking things up.”

“A hundred…? Pfft. Shit happens. Most of that probably wasn’t even me,” Lucy scoffed. “You guys see an elephant in New York, you think I’m responsible, never mind it’s in the middle of a fucking zoo.”

“You think you can provide us with some guidance on what you did and didn’t do, then?” Fury demanded. “Just so we’ve got everything properly attributed.”

“Ehn.” She waved her hands. “I’ve just sort of been helping out as the need seemed to arise. I really couldn’t give you a list, per se.” She flashed him her sweetest smile. Hill scowled at her over his shoulder.

“Well, since I already have a list, and you’re oh so conveniently here, why don’t you and one of my senior agents just go down it and you tell him what you did and didn’t do?” Fury asked, smiling back with as much false cheer.

“Sure. Right after I talk to Coulson and Barton.”

Fury fixed her with a cold look. “The senior agent I had in mind is Barton.”

“Cool. Groovy. Let’s get this show on the road, then. Catch you two losers later.” She chucked Thor gently on the upper arm. 

Tony’s gaze flicked from her to Thor and then to Fury. He opened his mouth to say something when his phone chimed with the theme from _Shaft_. “Who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks?” 

Fury’s eye started twitching.

“Ah! Oh my fucking god. That’s not...seriously, that’s not my ringtone,” he blurted, slapping at his phone. “I cannot _believe_ I was about to stick up for you,” he hissed at Lucy.

“Don’t look at me, brother-man,” Lucy said archly. “I didn’t touch your damn phone. Hell, I don’t even know who Shaft is. Spent my early life in the midwest, remember? And I don’t think you were going to stick up for me, anyway. You were probably going to say something like ‘don’t poke the bear’ or ‘I don’t know if that’s such a good idea’ or something.”

“Get her down to Barton,” Hill grunted, her lips settling into a hard line.

“Oh, no! Not the exact thing I’ve been trying to accomplish for the past fucking day,” Lucy said, winking at Thor. He frowned and moved closer.

“Not you,” Fury snapped. “You’re getting a handle on your people before I have to put them off this base.”

“I’ll be fine, Thor,” she assured him. “I mean, this whole giant hovering doom satellite is just a giant fork in the eye of known physics. What could possibly go wrong?”

Fury raised his eyebrow, and Hill jerked her head toward the door. A pair of agents escorted Lucy out of the room and down a series of corridors. Eventually one of the guards shoved her into an elevator, and she snorted.

“You know I can turn you into a frog, right?” she asked conversationally. “I mean, aside from basic politeness, the fact that Hill didn’t even bother to have you cuff me should tell you something, yeah? Something like oh hey cuffs aren’t even worth bothering with here?” The woman’s jaw flexed, but she gave no outward sign of having heard her. “Fine. Ignore me. Listen really intently to _The Girl from Ipanema_ instead of the magician telling you it’s a bad idea to upset magicians. Just don’t come crying to me all like ‘oh god why did this happen’ when Strange ruins your life because you brought him coffee with two sugars instead of one.”

She casually scanned the helicarrier’s structure, looking for the telltale feel of Barton’s consciousness. They weren’t far. When they walked right past him and kept going, she pursed her lips and decided not to say anything. After another few minutes, she found herself face to face with Barton and Hank Pym and did a double-take.

“Jones,” Barton said coolly. Lucy narrowed her eyes at him.

“Barton,” she said carefully. He looked like the real deal. Pym wasn’t acting weird, or at least no more so than she’d come to associate with Pym as a baseline. _Shape-shifter?_ she thought. _Robot double? Hardlight hologram?_ She felt the shape of his mind and blinked. “ _Coulson_? What in the everloving _fuck_? You guys had _five feet_ to go. Literally. Five feet. How the fuck did you manage _this_ in the two seconds I left you alone?”

“So your explanation is that this was not intentional?” he asked coldly, his expression pinched.

Lucy stared at him for a few seconds before she burst out laughing. She felt slightly guilty about it, especially when genuine anger flashed in his--Barton’s, really, but the look was all Coulson’s--eyes. Not _that_ guilty, though, and it wasn’t really anything she could stop even if she’d felt guiltier. All of the bullshit she’d gone through to get them back to their bodies, and they’d somehow managed to swap the second she’d closed her eyes. Fucking SHIELD agents. She lit a cigarette. Hank tapped the ‘No Smoking’ sign, and she flipped him off. 

“Jesus fuck, Coulson, I can’t believe you two. You do something like this, and then you ask me if I did it, and if I did it on purpose.” She exhaled slowly. “I’m not even sure I can fix this, but we should probably do it soon, before Barton takes a swandive off something really tall about a half-second before he realizes that he’s a fifty-something desk ninja.”

“Agent Barton is confined to quarters for the moment,” Phil said tightly.

“Because he’s already done it?” she asked.

“Twice,” Hank supplied absently. Phil’s hand curled into a fist before relaxing.

“You two have the worst fucking luck sometimes,” she muttered, chuckling again. “I mean, not as bad as you both being dead, which is what would have happened without me, but still. Jesus fucking Christ.”

“It’s not funny.” 

Coulson’s tone in Barton’s voice was disconcerting, she thought, but probably not as disconcerting as it would have been if Barton weren’t in the habit of imitating Coulson every time he had to deal with her for prolonged periods of time. It was probably an after-effect of having to deal with Stark for however long SHIELD had actually been shepherding the man from drunken invention-orgy to drunken publicity-event. Lucy shrugged.

“It’s fucking hilarious, but I can appreciate where you might have a different perspective on that at the moment,” she said. “If it’s any consolation, you’ve got the better end of the deal.”

Phil rubbed his face. “That is _not_ actually a consolation, assuming as we are--for the time being at least--that you can get us back where we belong.”

“We could take a whack at it right now, you know,” Lucy suggested. “No time like the present and all.”

“I can smell the booze on your breath from here,” Phil grunted. Hank nodded.

“It’s inadvisable. You’re inebriated.”

“Or, and I’m just spitballing here, you two could drink until it seemed like a good idea.” Lucy grinned and spread her hands. “Come on. It’ll be great.”

Phil sighed heavily and looked at the tablet in his hand. His fingers kept twitching, and Lucy realized he wanted to put on reading glasses. She snorted.

“Fine. Go for it. Buzzkills.”

“Rain of jam in Brazil.”

“Yup. Also, that was supposed to have been lava, so you’re welcome.”

Phil sighed. “Lava?”

“The liquefied rock typically resulting from a volcano eruption,” she clarified unhelpfully.

“There weren’t any reported eruptions in that area.”

“Reported, I think, being the key word, here,” she pointed out.

“Flash flood in the Yucatan disappearing.”

“Yup.”

“Spontaneous flooding of a forest fire in Colorado.”

“Yup.”

“Twenty-foot rock python landing on the Washington Monument?”

“Nope.”

“Really?” Phil asked.

“Really. Sometimes it’s just really questionable transportation decisions on the part of a human being.”

“Swarm of migrating red crabs?”

“Unless David Attenborough and the BBC lied to us all, that’s just a thing that happens, Coulson. Natural phenomenon. Annual event.” Lucy laced her fingers behind her head and tilted her chair back. “I understand it’s something of a tourist attraction, even.”

“In Ontario.”

She looked at him blankly. “Is it...usually _not_ in Ontario? You sound like it’s usually not in Ontario.”

“It’s usually on Christmas Island,” Hank said.

“Um.”

“Near Australia.” He had the temerity to look disappointed. She aimed a kick at his shins.

“Uh, global warming?” she hazarded. “Or maybe they figured out a shortcut?”

“But not you,” Phil grunted.

“Definitely not me.”

“Dr. Thomas is back to being an octopus.”

“She was going to _stab_ me with a _stapler_ if she ever found me.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Hank protested.

Lucy shrugged. “It doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to be a credible threat. Which it was, because that woman is terrifying. Makes for an exceptionally low threshold for the definition of credible. I genuinely have no idea how she knew I was back.”

Hank started to say something, and Phil coughed sharply to cover it.

“Oh, you motherfuckers,” Lucy hissed. “She found out from you guys?”

“She _might_ have. If it turns out to be the case, you have our deepest apologies,” Phil said smoothly.

“You utter, unbelievable _jackasses_ ,” she groaned. “You’re plotting to double-cross the Asgardians about something, you’ve lost a glowy blue doomcube that probably is horrible and you shouldn’t have had it anyway, and you ratted me out to some rando marine biologist?”

“None of that can be verified,” Phil said firmly.

“Especially since none of it was really intelligible,” Hank added. “Am I missing something about Thor?”

Phil shot him a look. “Swarms of locusts?”

“Yes. All of them. In my defense, _that_ was an accident.”

Phil sighed. “The Governor of Georgia declaring himself the reincarnation of James Oglethorpe and attacking Florida in the name of Queen Anne.”

“Nope.”

“You didn’t do that.”

“That’s likely a combination of a, uh, previously-undisclosed substance abuse problem and a shockingly poor grasp of history. Though I do approve of the way that he, like the actual James Oglethorpe, showed up woefully unprepared and got brought up short at Saint Augustine. Not every day the tour guides in that trippy little fort there get to lead a pack of middle schoolers in repulsing an attack on US soil by sea.”

“Was _that_ you?”

“I may have stepped in on the side of historical accuracy, yes.” She spread her hands defensively when Phil shot her a glare. “What?”

“With functional 18th-century artillery and school children?” Hank demanded.

“Historically speaking, I’m reasonably sure all those kids were eligible for high-fatality factory work and putting out to sea,” Lucy protested. “Besides which, how could that have not been the best field trip ever? I mean, I don’t know how field trips were when you were in school, Coulson, but they sucked colossal amounts of dick when I was in school. We hardly ever got to assault anybody, never mind with actual cannons. It was _educational_. When you guys finally succeed in blowing up the world or fail to prevent the world from blowing up, those kids are going to be baller pirate captains.”

Phil ignored her. “The angry mob kicking the invaders out of the national park?”

“Reenacting the re-taking of Fort, um, Moses? I believe,” she said. “Though that name may not be quite right. It sounds a little non-Spanish for the right name. Can I borrow your computer for a second?”

“No.”

“Fine, be that way.” She crossed her arms and sat back, pouting.

“The mob,” Phil prompted.

“From what I understand, historical reenactment’s kind of a big thing there? And it’s a huge faux pas to not announce this stuff and reserve the sections of a site you need well in advance, so that may have been a _real_ fight about reenactiquette instead of a real-fight proper reenactment. I mean, for one thing, the guys coming in from St. Augustine to take back the fort killed the _hell_ out of Oglethorpe’s guys, and the news was only reporting a handful of Geogians down.”

“All this happened during Queen Anne’s War?” Hank asked skeptically. “I don’t remember this from history class.”

“God, no,” Lucy said, rolling her eyes. “Queen Anne’s War was some other fuck-up. Oglethorpe would have still been wearing ye olde English shortpants during Queen Anne’s War. Georgia wasn’t even a legit thing during Queen Anne’s War. See, this is basically what happens when a state is 45th in education for fifty years running. Everybody’s delusions wind up having no basis whatsoever in reality.” Her fingers strayed to where her signet ring would have been before she remembered she didn’t have it. She drummed them on the table instead and frowned. “The Oglethorpe guy attacked Spanish Florida during the War of Jenkins’s Ear.”

Hank rubbed his eyes and turned to Phil. “Okay, so are we done here now?”

“What?” Lucy protested. “ _I_ didn’t fucking name it. You can chalk that one up to drunken British lords.”

“That is not a real thing,” Hank said firmly.

“The fuck it’s not,” Lucy retorted, her eyes glittering belligerently. 

“There is no such thing as the War of Jenkins’s Ear.”

“Dude, there _is_.” She shrugged. It had definitely happened. She and her mother had spent an entire rainy day with a couple of history books and a bucket of cheap green plastic toy soldiers playing it out on the kitchen table. “It was colonial times. They called it a war whenever more than a hundred dudes were involved in a glorified barfight and the only fatalities were from galloping syphilis and scurvy. Not like they had to worry about getting approval from Congress and had a lot invested in labeling ten-year, billion-dollar bullshit ‘police actions.’ And anyway, all of this is besides the point, because I had nothing to do with Call-Me-Oglethorpe and his extremely confused band of merry National Guardsmen setting their GPSs for Florida.”

“But you did pony up for the defense,” Phil said.

“Yes.”

“But not the people in actual uniform,” Hank added.

“No, I think that was just them.”

“And this qualifies as helping how?” Hank asked.

“Pretty sure you’d never hear the end of it if you let Georgia wind up in charge of Florida by force of coke-addled arms, guys. I mean, I don’t know if you guys read the papers or anything, but that shit usually results in at least one congressional inquiry, and that’s probably going to generate a few uncomfortable questions about the line-item in the budget for eyepatches.”

Phil scowled and looked at the list again.

“Every pair of shoes in Boston inexplicably turned into cowboy boots.”

“Yup.”

“You did that.”

“Yup.”

“ _Why_?” Hank demanded, a look of horror stamped on his face.

“Bored. Funny. A little drunk. Etcetera.” 

“And this is exactly why I’m not letting you try to switch us back until you sober up,” Phil said.


	53. Chapter 53

Thor weighed the blade in his hand carefully, balancing it on his palm and letting his eyes run over the intricate markings. Sif paced restlessly, her anger banked somewhat now that she’d delivered the knife. Jan shifted her weight uneasily, her attention wandering back to the comm on her wrist, and Clint cleared his throat.

“Thor?”

“This was indeed one of Loki’s throwing knives,” he said. “You said it was given to you by a...snake covered in feathers? Who said it was Lucy’s?”

“She said he was a god and claimed not to know what he was talking about.” Clint ran his fingers through his hair. “But it looked Asgardian, so…”

“So you brought it to me,” Sif grunted. “As well you should have.”

“Do you think she was lying?” Thor asked. “When she said she knew nothing of it?”

“Well, her lips were moving, so, uh, yeah. Probably.”

Thor frowned, letting his fingers curl around the too-small hilt. “I need to speak to her, friend Clint. Privately.”

“If you think I’m going to let you confront Loki about his treachery and whatever game he’s playing now alone, unguarded, you’ve lost your wits,” Sif said quietly.

“How many opportunities has she had to harm me before now? All untaken, Sif,” he reminded her. “Whatever the object of this ruse is, if indeed it _is_ a ruse, I don’t think killing me is it.”

“There are other ways to hurt a person. You’re not doing this alone.”

“She’s right, Thor,” Jan said. “Jones isn’t sober, she’s already caused God knows how much damage since she came back, and you’re talking about riling her up. You need back-up. Why don’t you take Clint?”

“Thanks, Jan,” he muttered, shooting her a look.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “You’re also welcome for the blaster-bands you borrowed and then didn’t put back on the charger.”

“Will you see to Jane and the Warriors Three?” Sif asked her. “I’d prefer to have a trusted ally with them. Loki is unpredictable when backed into a corner.”

“Sure. Good luck, guys.”

****

Lucy sipped at the acrid coffee and made a face. “You guys do realize that this isn’t actually going to sober me up any faster, right? That’s a myth. It just means I’m more awake while I’m as drunk as I already am. I’ll be a more alert drunk.”

“That’s not what I’m here to discuss,” Thor said, his face somber.

“Yeah? Spill it, then. What aside from the Great Coulson and Barton Switcheroo is going down?”

Thor held out a slender, well-balanced dagger. Lucy stared at the knife. It was one of the set that she’d picked out of the underworld, changed her mind about, and hauled up with Clint. Her mind skidded to a halt at the sight of it in Thor’s hand. _Do-or-die time. Put up or shut up. Raise or fold._

“You guys are fucking unbelievable, you know that?” Lucy shook her head and glanced at Clint. “I specifically tell you ‘The gold is a trap.’ I specifically say ‘Do not touch the trap-gold, something bad will happen.’ And then what do you do? Exactly what I told you _not_ to do. And yet somehow, when something bad happens, just like I fucking _said it would_ , it’s my fault? Fuck you guys. You touch a stove after I tell you it’s hot, you don’t get to yell at me when you get hurt. You get to say thank you, and mean it, when I fix the burn.”

_Never let it be said I didn’t know how to make a bad situation worse._

Thor put his hand on her shoulder, his grip deceptively gentle. She didn’t think she could shake him off if she tried. Her stomach twisted with the knotted emotions rolling off of him. Need, want, love, hurt, _home, please just come_ home _I can’t fix this without you, just admit it please come home_. She wanted to hit him, or strangle him, or anything, really, so long as it choked off the siren song that she could have a real family again if only she smiled and answered to a different name and made everything right again.

“This was my brother’s knife.” 

“Okay, dude, I need you to get your fucking mitt off me,” she hissed, glaring at him. 

Her head hurt, and she felt like she was on quicksand. She could slide right into the role. She’d be even better than the original, a thing manufactured from what they’d always wanted their brother, their son, to be. She’d click right into place, all the sharp edges sanded off the square peg. Mother, father--alive. _Immortal_. A sibling, practically invulnerable. His fingers dug into her shoulder. All of it built on a bright, glittering lie, doomed to crumble the first time anybody thought about it too hard. All of it sure to slip away as soon as she’d come to depend on it. As soon as she let her guard down. _Again_. How often was she going to take the same bait? 

“Loki.” It was practically a plea.

“ _Now_.” Her eyes flashed.

“It’s yours.”

“It _isn’t_.” She slapped it out of his hand, her lips sliding back over her teeth in a snarl. Sif was starting forward even as it sank into a monitor blade-first. An electric crackle started from somewhere inside the console, then acrid smoke began pouring from the hole. A muffled boom rumbled through the carrier, and the floor vibrated for a split-second before everything lurched off keel. Everyone froze.

“What the fuck did you do, Jones?” Clint demanded, staring around them.

“I broke a monitor, Barton. Why the fuck did breaking a monitor break your fucking hover-ship?” she shot back, pushing Thor away. He didn’t loosen his hold. “How low did the lowest bidder _go_?”

The undamaged monitors flickered to life and displayed the image of a man with a bright red, skull-like face. He started talking, and the speakers buzzed with garbled static.

Lucy gaped at the screen. “Are you guys seriously under attack from a hundred-year-old Nazi?”

The deck reeled under them, and Sif grabbed Thor to keep him upright.

“Are you guys seriously _losing_ to a hundred-year-old Nazi?”

“We need to find Lady Jane,” Thor growled, trying to keep his footing. Lucy shoved his hand from her shoulder and retreated a few steps, reorienting gravity around her to counteract the yawing helicarrier.

“You should probably hurry up with that, then,” she spat, tilting her head and closing her eyes. “She’s with Sitwell, and everybody’s pinned down by a bunch of HYDRA goons.”

Sif glared at her. “Then do something!”

“Your girlfriend, your problem.” She shrugged and crossed her arms.

Thor stared at her, hurt etched on his face. “I love her, Loki.”

“Then you should probably go rescue her. They’re running out of ammo,” she said. “Level 7, starboard section C.”

“Thor, come on,” Sif snarled, pulling him after her. Lucy watched grim resolve replace heartbreak on his features and let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding when they disappeared down the corridor.

“We _need_ that scientist,” Clint said, clinging to the console.

She lit a cigarette and took a drag off it. A headache was starting to creep its way up the back of her neck and around to her temples. _Next time I come back from the dead, I’m taking it easy for a few days._

“Given the fact that that scientist and her trigger-happy sidekick commandeered a bunch of your guys, rescued that _other_ scientist, and are in the process of evacuating Level 8 due to it being on fire, I can see why.”

“She _what_?”

“Made you guys look like a bunch of jerkoffs,” Lucy clarified.

“So you just lied to your brother.”

“To get what I wanted, yes.” She smiled placidly. “It’s kind of a thing I do, every so often. You know, when it gets me what I want. I’m pretty sure you’ve seen me do it before. Now come on--we need to find Coulson, get you two switched, and not get blown up in the process.”

He staggered and heaved when she extended the gravitational effect to cover him.

“I didn’t know you got seasick.”

“I _don’t_ get seasick,” he groaned, sucking in deep breaths and screwing his eyes shut. “Coulson gets seasick.”

“You know what I meant.” Lucy gently steered him out of the room, keeping well clear in case he lost his battle with nausea. She triangulated their position in relation to Coulson’s location and chewed the inside of her cheek. Teleporting herself and Barton to elsewhere in the interior of an unpredictably moving vehicle was a bad bet.

“So what’s on Level 7?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“You sent them to 7. You said Jane is on 8. What’s on 7?”

“7’s where they’re evacuating to. Stop distracting me.” 

“You know he’s going to figure out what you did pretty quickly, right?”

“And by that time, I intend to be as available as the head of a shell corporation with a post office box in the Caimans and an empty rental office in Costa Rica.”

The deck pitched steeply under them, and Clint moaned and doubled over. “I hate magic so much right now.”

“You’re only saying that because your inner ear is telling you one thing and your eyes are telling you something else,” she explained patiently. “If you were trying not to be smashed flat against the upper wall right now, you’d be complaining about _that_. You think the elevators are still working with all this going on?”

“No chance in hell.”

“Looks like we’re taking the stairs, then.”

“There’s no cover on the stairs. We’ll be sitting ducks.”

“It’s cool,” she said, hauling him upright and dragging him along after her. “If we run into any HYDRA agents, you can just barf all over them. Or, you know, I can keep their bullets from hitting us. Because I’m a _fucking magician_.”

“You could just turn them all into newts right now, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he muttered.

“Don’t be childish. Where’s the art in that?” she scoffed. “And also I think the bigger problem is the fact that they’ve damaged your carrier, which is currently over a populated area, so if I knock out the big honking thing they’re attacking you with, the casualties are going to be massive and of the civilian variety, and I like civilians a lot more than I like you guys. And I mean, by a _huge_ margin.”

“And where does HYDRA currently fall on that metric?” he asked, pulling his gun as a pair of enemy agents came into view.

“They owe me money, they tried to kill me a lot, and they’re currently trying to crash something I’m on, so pretty low.” She pursed her lips. “You realize Coulson is left-eye dominant, yeah?”

“It’s fine until I think about it,” he gritted, giving his head a quick shake and trying to reorient himself. “You really fucked us over with this.”

“I didn’t do a goddamned thing,” she retorted, snatching the gun from him. She shot the two men and handed it back, picking up the pace in anticipation of the noise attracting more hostile attention.

“You don’t seriously expect me to believe that knife caused this?” he asked as they clattered down a flight of grated steps.

“I don’t know what caused it, but I do know that it wasn’t me. Which means that it was either you two, or some weirdness in the medical bay, or the knife.” She shook her head. “Why the fuck did you two have to go pawing through that pile of junk when I told you not to? I mean, seriously. All that fucking effort, and you two foul it up on the home lap.”

“Why the fuck can’t you just admit you’re Thor’s fucking sister already?” he groused back. “You two are practically a B-plot in a soap opera at this point.”

“You planning on going to Coulson’s family reunion if I can’t get you switched back? No? Then just extrapolate out from there why I’m not down with pretending to be someone I’m not. You know, we really should have grabbed a machine gun off one of the guys I killed back there, because that is an assload of HYDRA soldiers.” 

“Shit,” Clint breathed, ducking behind her. “How are we going to play this?”

Lucy thought quickly. They were in a cluster, heavily armed, and well-armored. Whatever was going on elsewhere in the ship, this particular squad hadn’t been disrupted by encounters with SHIELD agents yet. A frontal assault would be inadvisable. “Like this.”

She snapped her fingers, and the floor beneath them dematerialized for a few seconds. It popped back into place with a metallic crunch, and Clint blinked.

“Problem solved.”

“I think I got told some bedtime stories about you when I was little,” Clint said, his face slack.

“Keeping that in mind, you wanna tell me what’s up with Fury and the Asgardians vis-a-vis me?” she asked, taking him by the elbow and moving quickly. 

Her flip-flops slapping softly against the deck was the only sound for a few seconds before a muffled explosion raised another klaxon. The carrier banked hard to port.

“Do you think you could do something about that?” he asked tightly.

“What, the alarm? I think it’s on to let everybody know something important is failing.”

“ _The fact that we are falling out of the sky_.”

“You want something, I want something,” she shot back, hesitating at a doorway. “Gun?”

He shoved it into her hand, his jaw clenched and his eyes angry. She darted around the corner and shot the agent lying in wait for them. Clint scrambled for the railing as normal gravity took hold around him. She collected him and looked around.

“The Asgardians have reneged on a few early promises of sharing tech, based largely on shit you’ve told them about how we use it,” Clint growled, reluctance lining his face.

“And Fury would like them to cough up.”

“Yeah.”

“And thinks he’s got a better chance of them doing that if he’s got me as a bargaining chip.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you people are fucking dicks. Kudos for at least not trying to hold his girlfriend hostage.”

“That was deemed a riskier prospect,” Clint muttered.

Lucy snorted. “I think even _I_ would have had to do something on general principle at that point, and my moral compass is due profit.”

“Any time you want to come through on your end of this deal, feel free,” Clint hissed.

“Let’s see….” She frowned, concentrating. “That’s their guns down, and that’s your rotors re-started, and oh shit.”

“What?”

“Stark was already working on that. I _may_ have just killed JARVIS.”

“How can you not tell?” he yelped. The floor gradually returned to level.

“If there’s an entire branch of philosophy devoted to whether or not something is alive in the first place, you’re not allowed to yell at me for not being able to tell, at a distance, whether or not I’ve just snuffed it.” She sighed. “Okay, so Coulson and Hill just down this hall and on the right. Ideas for dealing with the thirty HYDRA jackholes between us that do not involve turning them into newts.”

“Uh, can you activate the fire-suppression systems? Because the last time I was in a fight and that happened, everything was pretty much over but the swearing and the slip-and-fall injuries.”

Lucy tilted her head. “I can’t trip them without actually setting a fire, which seems like a bad idea, but I can just rupture the pipes and foam the lot of ‘em.”

“That works.”

“Okay, then.”

Clint frowned. “What are you waiting for, exactly?”

“I already did it.” Lucy rolled her eyes. “It’s gonna take a few seconds for it to build up to the point where it bursts a ceiling panel, Barton. It’s not coming out its special little nozzles right now, you know. Oh, there it goes. See?”

A series of clattering bangs was followed by frenzied screaming and short bursts of gunfire.

Clint sighed heavily. “You didn’t hear that stuff about the Asgardians from me.”

“Why not? Your selective communication of intelligence saved the day.”

“Standard procedure is to lie in such cases,” he said sourly.

“Yeah, but I can _tell_ when you’re lying.” She pinched his cheeks. “You’ve got Coulson’s face but not his _poker_ face.”

“And Thor would probably have told you anyway.”

“And Thor would probably have told me anyway,” she agreed. “Ready to run?”

“I don’t want to get shot today, Jones.”

“Nobody wants to get shot today, Barton.” She took his hand and sprinted through the hallway, plowing through foam that was knee-deep and fast expanding. “HYDRA business! Coming through! Hail HYDRA! Two more heads taking your place! Red Skull is the best! See you at the Christmas party!”

Clint tripped and landed on her when she pulled him down and slid past the SHIELD defenders. Behind them, one of the less-shocked HYDRA soldiers opened fire, and bullets ricocheted off the panels above them.

“Guess they don’t have Christmas parties in HYDRA,” Lucy grunted, shoving him off her. Phil and Maria stared at them. “Hi. First person to come up with an appropriate _Star Wars_ quote gets rescued.”

“Jones,” Phil said, startled. She scraped foam off her arms and out of her hair.

“Close, but no cigar. Second prize is a body-swap.” She grabbed his arm. “Alaca _zam_!”

It wasn’t as difficult as she’d thought it might be. In spite of the delay, they both wanted back in their own shapes with such a visceral, intense longing that all she had to do was pry them back out of the wrong bodies. Phil coughed and fell to the floor, gasping for air, and Clint doubled over and groaned.

“I hate magic so much, there aren’t even words for it.”

“But what about the bottomless quiver?” she asked him.

“I hate magic with the exception of that one useful thing,” he amended.

“You doing okay there, Coulson?” Lucy smiled at Hill, who had a gun pointed at her face. “If so, please say ‘Don’t shoot her, Hill,’ in a very firm, clear tone.”

“Maria, we need her,” he coughed, his voice strangled. “Aim for a knee.”

“Jerk,” Lucy said. “Seriously, bro, you okay?”

“I think my lungs have collapsed,” he gasped.

“I don’t think that’s something you really have an opinion on, Coulson. Pretty sure that’s something that you get pretty sure about pretty quickly.” She touched his back. “That’s just a blood pressure spike. Sorry. I think I can--” He passed out. “Shit. He’s fine, he’s fine. Don’t shoot me. He’s just...you know what a vasovagal episode is?”

“Stop helping,” Clint grunted.

“You weren’t saying that when I melted HYDRA’s artillery,” she retorted.

Maria slapped Phil lightly. “Come on, Coulson, wake up. What exactly did you do to their artillery? And if you’ve hurt him, I swear to God--”

“I _didn’t_. He’s _fine_. And I melted their artillery, so they would stop shooting at us. Also, if you don’t get that gun out of my face, I can’t be held responsible for the extremely inappropriate crush I’m likely to develop.”

“Not the time, Jones,” Phil mumbled.

“It’s never the time. That’s what makes them really inappropriate. You still with us, Phil?”

“That’s Agent Coulson to you,” he said weakly.

“There we go. That’s my favorite government-funded bastard,” she cooed.

“Uh, Jones?” Clint said sharply.

“Sorry, Barton. But you are my second favorite, provided you promise not to tell Romanoff.”

“We need a barrier up, Jones. Like, nowish. Nowish would be good,” Clint whispered.

Lucy looked up and found herself staring at a row of rifle muzzles. “Oh. Right. HYDRA.”

“Yeah. HYDRA,” Clint agreed.

She threw up a forcefield. “Run!”


	54. Chapter 54

“How the hell did they get this many guys onto the carrier in the first place?” Lucy demanded, hunkering down behind a console. “This seems like a _lot_ of guys. Like, a lot more guys than were on the carrier ten minutes ago.”

“They have jetpacks,” Hill growled, slamming another magazine into her pistol.

Lucy frowned. “Of course they do. Why wouldn’t they. They’re being led by a mutant Nazi nonagenarian. They probably have lightsabers, too.”

“If they have, they haven’t used them yet,” she snapped. “And while we have yet to conclusively rule out the possibility that the Red Skull currently commanding that airship is the same Red Skull who went down with Rogers in the ‘40s, it seems more likely that HYDRA has finally managed to replicate the experiment that produced the original and that this is a new Red Skull.” 

“Even if this is the same man, Schmidt was in his forties when he disappeared,” Phil muttered, his eyes closed and his face pale.

“What?” Clint asked, his brows furrowing.

“He’d be over a hundred. Not in his nineties.”

“Is you crabbing about details a sign that you’re going to make it or that you’re checking out?” Lucy asked. “Because if your last words are Captain America trivia, I’m engraving them on your tombstone.”

A hail of gunfire covered his response, and Hill eyed her critically.

“Why are you still here?” she asked when the volley stopped.

“Because you’re very pretty?” Lucy hazarded.

“Because we’re getting a bill for this,” Phil sighed. “Would it kill you to do something about the people trying to shoot us, Jones?”

“I never authorized hiring independent contractors, Coulson.”

“But my hourly rates for this sort of thing are _extremely_ reasonable,” Lucy protested.

“How reasonable?” Hill shot back.

“Five hundred, plus expenses, five percent off the bottom if the organization in question is also shooting at me,” she said brightly. “Alien-sitting not included. The clock started half an hour ago.”

Hill’s eyes narrowed for a long handful of seconds, then she pulled a thin stack of folded hundreds out of her back pocket and shoved them at her.

“I want my money’s worth,” she said quietly.

“Well, then,” Lucy murmured. She grinned and fanned the bills out, made them vanish with a flourish of her fingers. “Guess I’ve got work to do. See you later, losers.”

“No damaging SHIELD equipment or personnel,” Hill called after her.

“I’ll do my best.” She waved at the enemy agents, and they stiffened, blinking furiously. “Yes, you’re blind. Yes, it wiIl wear off, but not for a day or two. I also just turned your bullets into bubblegum, so I’d think seriously about surrendering while everybody’s still in a good mood, if I were you.”

She strutted off, whistling.

“I think maybe you should have specified the part about friendlies before you gave her that wad of cash, Maria,” Phil muttered, pushing himself up.

“Phil, are you dying?” she asked, touching her comm. “I need additional personnel to Level 5, Section A.”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“Then that’s Agent Hill to you,” she told him firmly. He offered a wan smile. “And we’ve got work to do.”

*****

Lucy prowled around the glass circle warily, trying to get a clear shot at the soldier on the other side of it. On the one hand, the glass was bulletproof. On the other hand, it was completely transparent, so he had a perfectly clear view of her as she tried for a better position. She rubbed her forehead on the back of her hand. Fucking hell, was she tired. Her headache was worse, the familiar flicker and sizzle of slipping control sang under her skin, and she desperately wanted a cigarette. On the plus side, she thought, the absolute chaos coming over one of the HYDRA comms she’d looted from a downed goon was immensely cheering. Jetpacks were, she had to admit, an incredibly useful toy that she was retroactively pissed at not having gotten to requisition back when HYDRA has still been paying her. They were exponentially less useful, and quite a bit more dangerous to the user, when upwards of a third of the people flying them lost velocity and directional controls. A quarter of HYDRA personnel on the HYDRA craft spontaneously having their uniforms turned into replica SHIELD uniforms had not helped matters.

Hill’s five hundred had bought her roughly three more minutes of usefulness, and it seemed somehow a bit cheap to spend it chasing one guy around a...she didn’t even know. Clean lab? Escape pod? It was clearly meant to disengage from the rest of the platform, and it was a straight shot down through the lowest level from here. Specialized cargo container? She gritted her teeth as her target sidled left the second she moved right. High-tech mulberry bush in an infuriating reenactment of “Pop Goes the Weasel”?

“Loki!”

Lucy sighed. Of _course_ he hadn’t stayed with the hot scientist once he’d figured out she was fine. She wondered if Hill would demand a refund if she shot him in the foot or the leg or somewhere else relatively survivable. She could shoot him a little, stuff him into the escape pod, and claim it was done with his best interests at heart.

“Fuck off,” she shouted back. “I’m in the middle of something here, and you should be helping the non-combatants evacuate.”

The HYDRA agent took the opportunity to bolt through the open door, and Lucy threw up her hands.

“I have been trying to tag that guy for the past three minutes, and you just let him waltz right past you,” she snarled. “I mean, for fuck’s sake, Thor.”

“I am sorry for losing your opponent, but we must leave this vehicle at once. Director Fury has instructed all who are not essentially to its piloting to abandon it. He does not believe that it can be righted,” he said solemnly. He raised his hands, trying to soothe her, and she rolled her eyes.

“I can get myself off this fucking wreck if it comes down to it. You should have stuck with your girlfriend.”

“You misled me as to her state,” he scolded. “She had acquitted herself most impressively and won a great victory by the time we arrived.”

“Have you noticed that you believe or disbelieve whatever I say pretty much entirely based on what you’re afraid of?” she asked. “It’s actually kind of weird. I mean, Coulson at least bases it on what he already knows about a situation.”

She leaned back on a console, then froze when the large clamps holding the glass room in place hissed and relaxed.

“Oh, that’s not good,” she muttered. Thor looked back at them in confusion, then swung back to face her.

“What is happening?” he asked, shifting his stance.

The platform whirred softly.

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it and I think we should--”

It dropped suddenly, ejecting the cylinder and opening a gaping pit in the floor. The rush of air sucked them off their feet and out into the void of open air. The room spun wildly below them, displaying no capacity for guidance or self-propulsion. Lucy closed her eyes against the wind for a second. Fucking SHIELD and their fucking SHIELD engineers. Why would they even put something like that on a fucking airship?

When she opened them again, she could see that they were over open water, which was at least one thing to congratulate Fury on. The HYDRA ship had a red skull surrounded by white tentacles, which she thought had probably looked fine on small patches and insignias but, fifty feet high and on the side of a ship, was just tacky. She got her bearings after another three seconds of freefall and teleported below the cloud cover. She surveyed the landscape. _Where do I want to go?_ Someplace out of the way, but not so out of the way that it wouldn’t have a working payphone or be willing to let her use the landline. Someplace that wouldn’t be swarming with cops within two seconds of touchdown. She picked out a remote complex that looked like a gas station and teleported the last distance to its parking lot. She’d barely gotten her clothes back in order when Thor plummeted into a nearby field, followed closely by the glass room. The room bounced and rolled a truly surprising distance, while the alien god staggered to his feet and made his way toward her. She shook her head and went inside.

“Long way from the beach,” the cashier said, her eyes tracing Lucy’s shorts and flip-flops. She cracked her gum and waited for an explanation while Lucy rifled through the displays.

“You don’t say,” Lucy grunted, looking around. She tossed a candy bar, a bottle of coke, and a six-pack onto the counter. “I need a pack of Marlboros, too.”

“Gonna need to see some ID, then.” The girl blew a bubble, her eyebrows arched insolently.

Lucy fished out Tony’s wallet and slid his driver’s license across the counter, letting her smile show too many teeth.

“ _Your_ ID,” the girl clarified, flicking it back to her.

“That your car out there?” Lucy asked. “The beat-up Camaro?”

“Boss’s.”

“And your boss is where? Back in the stockroom?”

“Sleeping it off with some chick he cruised at a party last night. Why?”

“Because you don’t need to see my fucking ID, and you’re not going to notice me hotwiring it in about five minutes.” Lucy peeled off two of the hundreds she’d gotten from Hill and laid them on the counter.

The girl popped the bubble and went back to chewing the gum. “I actually kind of like my boss.”

“Then feel free to have a clairvoyant dream in which his car’s parked in a handicapped space in Boise the night after next,” she snorted. “Because that’s where I’m ditching it.”

“I could call the cops.”

“What are you doing, sister?” Thor demanded, pushing the door half open and leaning in. Lucy pursed her lips, and the cashier gaped openly.

“Not wearing half a pasture. What are _you_ doing?”

“We need to call the Son of Coul and get word of the other Avengers.”

“ _We_ don’t need to do shit. _You_ can feel free to do whatever you want. They gave you a cell, yeah?”

He held up a smashed, charred plastic lump that might, conceivably, once have been a phone.

“And I need change so that the God of Lightning can call a secret government agency and arrange a ride on a black helicopter.”

“Payphone’s busted.”

Lucy pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Okay, I’m going to say this very slowly, just so we’re all on the same page,” she sighed, pushing the money across the counter to the girl. “I am a supervillain. We,” she pointed to Thor and then back to herself, “just got spit out of a crazy spy mothership by a ridiculous doomsday _thing_ that is almost certainly not up to OSHA standards. Like, _we fell out of the fucking sky_ , is how we got here.”

“Is he a supervillain too?” the cashier asked. 

Lucy leaned forward and read the girl’s name tag. “No, Marissa, he is not.”

“It’s Julie,” she corrected. “Company policy says you have to wear a name tag. Doesn’t say whose, though.”

“Well, aren’t you terribly clever, Julie? No, he is not also a supervillain.”

“Lucy, please stop harassing this civilian,” Thor sighed.

“I’m bargaining with her, not harassing her.”

“Actually--”

“Does the landline here work?” Lucy interrupted her.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Okay. We’re getting somewhere.” Lucy retrieved the handset and handed it to Thor. “Do you have to dial anything to get out?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, just call your damn handler.” She turned back to the girl. “So, cigarettes, all this, not noticing the car, I don’t need change.”

Julie crossed her arms and scowled. “All right, fine. What brand you say?”

“Marlboros.”

She added a pack of cigarettes to the pile, rang everything up, and shoved everything the two hundreds didn’t pay for into her pocket. “You don’t look like a supervillain.”

“People who look like supervillains tend to get caught a lot quicker,” Lucy pointed out reasonably. “Having problems, Thor?”

“The magic voice keeps telling me that he is not in an area of service,” he confessed.

“Call Stark, then.”

“I have tried. His magic voice tells me that it does not wish to speak to me and that I know full well the reason. In truth, though, I do not. I can recall no incident in which I gave it just cause to be angry with me.”

“That might actually have been me,” she hedged, frowning. “Try Barton.”

“I do not know his number.”

“Shit.” Lucy chewed her lip. “Well, I’m sure you’ll think of something. Bye, guys.”

She scooped up her purchases and waved as she breezed past them and out the door.

“Lucy, wait, please!” he called, trotting after her. 

She popped the lock on the Camaro, dumped everything onto the passenger seat, and tapped the ignition. The car roared to life.

“Please,” he repeated, pushing his hair out of his face. 

Lucy let out a deep breath. “Okay, here’s the thing. You get in this car? You do not say a fucking word. You do not touch me. You get out the second we hit an urban area. We clear?”

He started to say something, thought better of it, and then nodded sadly.

“Then yes, you can have a ride.”

He climbed in, curling deeper into the seat as she peeled out of the parking lot.


	55. Chapter 55

Lucy scowled at the road stretching out in front of them and wondered how the hell they’d wound up this far away from anything even resembling civilization. She was down to her last cigarette and hungry enough to chance the package of expired beef jerky she’d found in the glove compartment while looking for a map. Thor looked like he was going to trying talking to her any minute. She hadn’t even known jerky _could_ expire. It was vaguely like finding out that vodka could go bad. Thor fidgeted uncomfortably and adjusted his seat for the third time in as many minutes.

“You know what the definition of stupidity is?” she asked wearily.

“You wish to talk now?” he grunted. He looked as tired and frustrated as she felt.

She ignored the irritation in his tone. “Doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different result.”

“So we trust you, and we’re fools for doing so?” he asked warily.

“I was thinking more about my part in this, actually, but if you want, you can go ahead and just keep that in your pocket for the next time it’s applicable.” She chewed the end of her unlit cigarette before giving in and setting the tip ablaze. “I keep saying the same thing, over and over, and you keep not listening, and I don’t know what I expected--how I expected this to go--but I do know that I can’t keep fucking doing this. I like you, and you’re a good guy for a hero in a literal fucking _cape_ , but right now I think if I have to explain that I’m not your brother _one more fucking time_ , Sif’s going to get her vindication because I will do my level best to set you on fire. And I’m not being facetious.” She adjusted the strap of her bikini top. She desperately needed to get real clothes soon. “There isn’t a whole lot left that can get me as irrationally angry as having this fucking argument with you. It’s like deep down you can’t stop thinking that there’s this magic word you can say to make me agree with you, and there isn’t, and when I can’t make you understand that, I really just….” She sighed. “Fuck it, never mind. None of this is going to get through that thick skull of yours anyway.”

“You really just what?” he asked softly.

“I kind of want to murder you. A lot. For real. It makes me want to fucking _end_ you sometimes.” She rubbed her eyes and drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “And I don’t _like_ feeling that way about someone who hasn’t really done anything to quite deserve getting murdered, you know? This whole thing feels like a mean-spirited cosmic joke.”

“I appreciate that you’d rather not want to kill me,” he offered.

She started laughing, wild and uncontrollable and bitter. He reached for her shoulder but arrested the movement midway, suddenly self-conscious.

“Jesus fucking Christ. This is where we’re at, you know? Having a fucking bonding moment over me not wanting to want to kill you. Oh my god, would the shrinks have a field day with this one.”

“Is that why you lied about Jane’s predicament?” he asked.

“I needed you out of my face before I did something rash one way or another,” she said. “And it’s not like she couldn’t use the help. And yes, maybe I wanted to upset you, because I was angry.”

“I forgive you.”

Her eyes flashed, and her fingers twitched. “Maybe just quit while you’re head, Thor.”

“Do you not want me to?” he murmured.

“No, I don’t. You started this. You don’t have the…” She groped for words. “You don’t have the _standing_ to forgive me when I get angry with you for being a jackass. You started it, and you’re not sorry you’re a jackass. I get to be angry with you, and you don’t get to wave it off.”

Thor watched her for a long moment. “I don’t know how to make you happy.”

“And I don’t know how to get you to understand that you’re not getting what you want.”

He sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For everything.”

She let her head fall back against the seat. “Me too. Not that I’ve got anything to apologize for, mind, but I’m sorry it’s happened.”

“How do we fix this?”

She let her left hand hang out the window and fanned her fingers against the wind. After a long moment, fished out her flask and took a sip. “We don’t. There’s nothing here to fix.”

His brows furrowed, and he shook his head. “There is.” 

“Yeah? Even if I’m not your brother?” She passed it to him.

He drank in silence for a moment. “We’ve still fought together. You still saved me. You’ve saved my comrades. Even if you were a stranger, I would still be…” He paused. “...fond of you.”

“I’m reasonably sure I just got us ejected out of an airship at height, and you do realize that just being in this car at this point is probably a felony, right? Because I’m thinking you being ‘fond’ of me after all this shit, absent any other factors, is a symptom of you needing therapy.”

“Have I told you how I first met the Lady Jane and her companion Miss Darcy?”

“No, and if you promise not to elaborate, I’ll let you pick where we get dinner,” she sighed.

“Even if you weren’t my brother, I believe it would be worthwhile to reach an understanding.”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

“No,” he murmured. “You don’t.”

She took the flask back and tapped her nails against it. “You need to start facing the fact that I’m not just being coy or trying to push your buttons when I say I’m not your brother. And I’m too deep into this to make good decisions about it. I need to find a way to get some perspective on the whole thing without, like, blowing up Mount St. Helens again or holding everyone’s left shoes for ransom.”

They drove in silence for a few miles before he cleared his throat.

“The dagger.” 

It was almost, but not quite, a question.

“What about it?”

“Was it yours?”

Lucy sucked at her teeth. “I’ve been told it was, once upon a time, by gods I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw them. Which, before you ask, is really not very far at all. Personally, I have no reason to believe they’re telling the truth. One’s probably a little mad at me for saving the world and the other’s mad at everyone just on general principle. It doesn’t _feel_ like it’s mine.”

He sighed. “I’m sorry I surprised you with it.”

“I suppose I can kind of see where you’d come running to me when you saw it,” she said grudgingly.

“I miss what we had.”

“I’m sorry you don’t have it anymore.” Lucy finished the flask. “I’m sorry I can’t give it back to you. I miss not being on a SHIELD hot-list.”

“I could ask Director Fury--”

“Dude, I blew up Antarctica. Even if they do take me off the official one, they’ll just underline me twice on their double-secret probation lists that nobody else gets to see.” She shook her head. “Especially after the thing with the yeti.”

“You swore you had no dealings with the yeti,” Thor said reproachfully.

“I didn’t, but then everybody wouldn’t shut up about the fucking yeti, so I looked into it.” She cleared her throat. “Which may have, in retrospect, been a mistake. A small one. More of a slip-up than a mistake, really.”

“It would perhaps be best if you did not go into detail,” he murmured.

“Yeah, well. You’re probably gonna hear about it from Coulson once everything calms down, anyway. Just tell them I said it’ll grow back.”

“And this is the truth?”

“Fuck if I know. I mean, it _should_ , but…” She trailed off. “Some things don’t come back. Sometimes that’s just what happens.”

“We are no longer talking about the yeti, are we?” he asked sadly.

“Not really, no.”

“We could begin again.”

“You’re not going to be able to ignore fifty thousand years of what you think of as history, and I know you’re not going to be able to ignore fifty thousand years of what you think of as history. We’re just going to end up having this same conversation again. Or I’m going to drop a building on you or something, and then Sif’s going to get her I-told-you-so.” She nursed the last few puffs out of the cigarette and ground the butt into the sand in the ashtray. “It’s what you might call a fool’s errand.”

“I’m not _that_ old,” he protested.

“You know what I mean.” She dug into the bag of jerky and poked at one of the pieces of meat.

“We could try.” He plucked at the seat belt and shifted uneasily. “You could talk to Mother about it. Her advice is always wise.”

“ _Your_ mother,” she snapped. “Not much mystery what she’s going to say about it, though.”

“She is everyone’s mother. That is part of what being the All-Mother means,” he huffed, crossing his arms.

“Except that she doesn’t have a personal interest in _everyone_ , and this is exactly the sort of thing I was just talking about.” She slapped the wheel in frustration, hitting the horn and startling a bunch of crows clustered near some unidentifiable bit of roadkill. “It’s just the same thing, over and over again.” She shook her head. “I swear, after this I’m going to spend a couple of years just hanging out with the whales and trying to be more zen about shit and not screwing around with the stock market.” Thor shot her a hurt look. “I mean, unless I really, really _want_ to screw around with the stock market. Not like, just because I’m bored.”

“And people always said I was the impulsive one,” Thor muttered.

“I’m not impulsive. I’m _spontaneous_.” Lucy chewed the inside of her cheek. “I think it’s less that you’re impulsive and more that you don’t think things through.”

“I confess I fail to see the difference at the moment,” he said, looking out the window.

“Well, you can plan to do something for a very long time without actually giving it much thought, the same way you can decide to do something very quickly without disregarding the logistics and outcome.”

“And you hold that I do the former?”

“That whole thing with Jotunheim is kind of a case in point. You didn’t just decide to go fuck it up on a whim because they ruined your coronation ceremony. I mean, Sif didn’t really get too deep into it, but I don’t think she had to. You could tell just how she talked about it. You guys all grew up looking at that fight as inevitable. But in spite of that, you still didn’t really have a concrete plan for what needed to happened when you finally went in.” She shrugged. “You expect everything to just fall into place, I think.”

“I could point out that you often do the same,” he said, his expression troubled.

“I do not,” she retorted. “When I do something? If everything just falls into place, that’s how I know it’s a fucking trap. If everything just works out like it should, with no hitches or problems, that’s when it’s time to start running.”

Thor snorted, and she rolled her eyes. 

“You cannot _always_ be mistrustful of good fortune,” he said finally.

“Sure I can. I mean, that thing about not looking a gift horse in the mouth? Well, how the fuck else are you supposed to figure out if it’s full of Greeks?”

Thor frowned. “Is that a common ailment of Midgardian horses?”

“It’s a fucking epidemic,” she grunted. “It’s not like I never get lucky. I get lucky all the time. It’s just that most of the shit I _plan_ doesn’t work out. Or, like, it works out, but then it turns out that, say, Blonsky is _really_ not a Stones fan, so then I have to go back and make all SHIELD’s files pertaining to that particular incident spontaneously vanish, only I _might_ have accidentally killed a lot of other databanks that _maybe_ had the old files on Schmidt while I was at it, so you should probably be prepared for somebody in a bodysuit who answers to ‘Agent’ yelling a lot about that once you get back to base. None of which, I might add, was a foreseeable outcome of the initial plan.”

“You have the gift of prophecy,” he pointed out, shaking his head.

“Well, yes, _technically_. But using it takes all the fun out of everything.” She pursed her lips and looked in the rearview. “For instance, if I’d been using it five minutes ago, I wouldn’t now have the opportunity to remember how much I detest sheriff’s deputies on traffic patrol at the end of the calendar month. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.”

The squad car flashed its lights, and Thor frowned.

“I believe the officer would like us to pull over,” he pointed out.

“Yeah? Good thing she’s probably pretty used to being disappointed, then,” Lucy said. 

“That is most unkind--”

“ _Because I didn’t steal a vintage sports car just to get pulled over in some back-country shithole._ ”

“Lucy--”

Anything else he wanted to say was lost to the engine roaring and the deputy’s sirens. A feral grin split Lucy’s face, and Thor gave up and braced himself as they accelerated.


	56. Chapter 56

Thor glanced in the rearview mirror and sighed. “I had expected this to be somewhat more...exciting.”

“Well, as soon as I find a drawbridge that’s starting to open, I’ll see what I can do,” Lucy grunted.

“These chases involve many more explosions when they are on the television,” he pointed out. “Darcy is fond of watching the programs that feature little else.”

She snorted. “Are you actually _asking_ me to blow things up?”

“No!”

“Not even a little?” she prompted.

“Much as it might do to relieve the tedium, I am not asking you to blow anything up, no matter how negligibly,” he said firmly.

“You know, it seems really unfair that you spend a million years as a dude who can’t wait to invade foreign countries at the drop of a hat for reasons that I’m still not entirely clear on, but the second fucking shit up would be a nice change of pace, you turn into a giant stick in the mud.”

“I am not a giant stick in the mud.” He crossed his arms. “And I am not a million years old. And I am unsure as to what the officer hopes to accomplish by leaving her siren on this entire time. Surely she must be aware by now that you have no intention of stopping?”

“It’s probably not as loud inside the cruiser. And I think it’s kind of a safety issue, like how it’s just good manners to pull the fire alarm a minute or two before blowing up somebody’s base.”

“The reports describing your past behavior have never emphasized etiquette.”

“Okay, and it’s also kind of good tactics, because it adds to the confusion and makes it more difficult to mount as effective a defense.”

“Do you think if we asked politely, she’d turn them off?”

“No.”

Thor chewed his lip. “How can you not remember Jotunheim’s attempt to conquer all the nine realms?”

“I wasn’t there for it, dude. Also, please don’t try to explain this shit again. I’m trying to drive, and the last thing I need is to have somebody nattering at me about Norns and giants and ancient blood-feuds about somebody looking at somebody else’s dragon funny and everything secretly involving a tree.” She swerved around a turtle in the road, tires squealing and the car fighting her control. “Fucking hell, I forgot how awful some of these cars are when it comes to steering. Man, you know what we should have stolen?”

“Nothing?” Thor asked.

Lucy rolled her eyes and then brightened. “Hey, we’re coming up on the county line. Do me a favor and lean out the window and flip her off?”

“I will do no such thing,” Thor sighed.

“Wet blanket.”

*****

Phil took a deep breath and cursed the sharp ache in his ribs. “Okay, let’s try this one more time, Marissa.”

The clerk gave him a sullen look and glanced across the parking lot to where the man she’d identified as her boss was arguing with a pair of local police.

“These two people were here.” He tapped the pictures of Thor and Lucy. “Did they identify themselves?”

“She gave me an ID that said she was Anthony Stark and said she was a supervillain. She said he was the god of light or something and that he wasn’t a supervillain.”

“Wait, she has Tony’s ID?” Clint asked, rubbing his jaw.

“She stole his wallet,” Jan sighed. “Why he didn’t just get it back, I don’t know.”

“Is that why JARVIS hung up on Thor?”

“No,” Phil snapped, silencing them with a glare. “Okay, Marissa, that’s very helpful. Did they say where they were going?”

“Boise.”

“Boise?” he repeated, startled.

“What’s in Boise?” Clint asked.

The clerk shrugged. “Something about handicapped parking.”

“That’s kind of random even for Jones,” Jan muttered.

“Did they say what route they were planning to take?” Phil asked.

She shook her head. “Probably started on the old state road that loops around the highway, though.”

“What makes you say that?”

She jerked her chin toward the tv. “That’s really the only way to get to that patch of the interstate from here.”

They followed her gaze. Phil sighed, and Clint cocked his head.

“That is a _lot_ of cops,” Jan said after a moment.

“I think this is why cloverleaf intersections were invented,” Clint muttered. “It’s like--”

“A massive breach of public order?” Phil asked. The agent blushed.

“Okay, yes, fine, it’s also that.”

“Jesus, Clint, tell me she’s not rubbing off on you,” Jan snorted. “Though I guess if this is what’s on CNN, Fury doesn’t have to worry about them picking up on the random sightings of a huge hovership hanging out below the cloudline.”

“Could you turn the sound on, please?” Phil asked.

“Speaker’s broken.”

“Of course it is,” Jan sighed. “Did they say or do anything else?”

“Besides steal my boss’s car and get snotty about my nametag?”

“Yes. Besides stealing your boss’s car. And...why would Jones get snotty about your nametag?” she asked, frowning.

“My name’s Julie, not Marissa.”

“And you didn’t mention that because…?”

The girl shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters!” Jan sputtered. “Our paperwork is going to be _wrong_ , and stop giving me that look, Phil.”

Phil shook his head and steered Jan back out of the building. 

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Clint said brightly as he followed them out the door.

Jan buzzed her wings, and Phil let go.

“We know where they are, and we can liaise with the local police force to pick Thor up,” he said. 

“So we’re seriously just going to ignore Jones?” she demanded. “Even when she’s doing whatever the hell that qualifies as? And she’s going to be _right there_?”

“The problem with picking her up for it is that then we have to deal with her,” Phil reminded her. “And we have to deal with her and Thor fighting. And her and Sif fighting. And her trying to pick fights with the Warriors Three.”

“And not being able to do much about any of the above, because then they all get mad at whoever’s trying to break it up,” Clint added.

“You know, cutting her a check and pointing her at HYDRA worked pretty well four hours ago,” Jan said. “It would keep her away from a civilian population, and it would keep Thor happy because we’d have eyes on her.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Phil hedged, frowning.

“Her paperwork’s even in the system from that bill she sent you over Reed consulting her when he was trying to get his magic-quantum converter working,” Jan continued, almost to herself. “I could get a line-item added to our monthly budget while we’re en route.”

“Jan? Let’s not do this, huh?” Clint asked, waving his hand in front of her face. She swatted him and headed for their SUV, leaving them to keep up with her.

“How does SHIELD usually code hired guns?” she asked.

“We don’t,” Phil said tersely, inclining his head slightly at the officers clustered around the manager on the other side of the parking lot. “Because SHIELD doesn’t _use_ hired guns, _Jan_.”

She shot him a look. “Okay, fine. We’ll put her down as Thor’s cultural interface assistant.”

“This is going to go badly,” Clint warned. “And that’s assuming she says yes.”

“Better or worse than things are going right now? Come on, guys--were we looking at the same airship? Those jerks got the drop on us in a flying Nazi discoball. If we didn’t see that coming, we can probably use all the distractions we can throw at them right now.”

 

*****

“Not to question your tactics, but are we even attempting to evade them anymore?” Thor asked wearily, looking out the window at the interminable line of cop cars stretched behind them.

“If that’s not questioning my tactics, I don’t know what is,” Lucy snapped. “And no, we’re not. At this point, it’s a staring contest.” She rolled the window down and leaned out. “Who’s going to blink first, you bastards?”

“Please stop insulting them. I would much prefer not being shot at any more today.”

“Not happening. Hey, is that Wasp?”

A gold and black blur zipped past the window, and Lucy recoiled. “Fuck fuck fucking _fuck_. That _was_ Wasp, and she just beaned me with a fucking cell phone. Here. Call your friends and tell them they’re assholes.”

The phone buzzed in Thor’s hands, and he looked it it, chagrined. After a moment, he answered the call. “Hello?”

“Thor? Are you all right?” Phil asked.

“I am physically uninjured, yes. Our comrades?”

“Everyone’s fine,” he assured him. “Can you put your sister on?”

“She is not much in a talkative mood at the moment.” He glanced at Lucy and found her looking behind them, a contemplative look on her face. “Perhaps a distraction would be in order, though.”

“The good agent wishes to speak to you,” he said, shoving the cell at her.

“Hi, Coulson.”

“What are you doing?”

“Testing a hypothesis. I call it the Second Law of the Dukes of Hazzard.”

“I see. And the results?”

“The results are that tv lied to me and jurisdiction is meaningless when in the ongoing pursuit of a scofflaw.”

“We need Thor back.”

“Yeah, no problem. Have Wasp come pick him up. He can rain on someone else’s parade for a while.”

“I have influenced no weather in any fashion since yesterday morning,” Thor protested, scowling at her.

“And we’re interested in hiring you on a temporary basis.”

“No can do, Coulson. I’m kind of busy with a side-project at the moment.”

“Calculating the precise moment to hit the brakes in order to cause the maximum amount of damage to public property does not count as a side-project.”

“There’s more to it than that, and yes, it does.”

“Can you put Thor back on?”

“No, because you’re just going to try to get him to talk me into saying yes.”

She tossed the phone out the window, and Thor covered his eyes with one hand. 

“Why did you do that?” he sighed.

“It was a very annoying conversation,” she told him solemnly. “Now get your belt off. Wasp’s coming to extract you, and I’m not stopping.”

“Could you at least slow down?” he demanded.

“Remind me never to go on a road trip with you. You’re already this cranky and it’s only been like three days.”

“It has scarcely been more than a few hours. The sun has not even set,” he said crossly.

“Well, see, there’s objective, literal time and then there’s the subjective amount of time that this has felt like,” she explained, turning cruise control off. They began to slow. “And this has definitely been three days by that reckoning.”

“If we’re judging by what it’s felt like, it has perhaps been closer to a year,” he groused.

“Of all the shit you’ve had to put up with since you got here, it’s long car rides that get you cranky? Good to know.” She pointed. “Here she comes. Say hi to your girlfriend for me.”

Thor sighed and squeezed her arm before levering himself up and out the window. Jan carried him to safety, and Lucy shook her head. SHIELD would have to pay their bills a lot faster before she let them put her on the payroll. She checked the rearview mirror one more time, then stomped on the brakes, turned right hard, and floored it, leaving the trail of cars behind her to slam into each other in a chain reaction while she tore off down the interstate.


	57. Chapter 57

“This was your idea,” Clint sighed, resting his head in his hands for a few seconds before going back to staring at the monitor.

“No, _my_ idea was to take a talking, self-directed tornado and point it back at a terrorist organization with a lot of WMDs and a penchant for dermatologically-disturbed criminal masterminds. My idea was, in fact, the exact opposite of this idea.” Jan scowled. “For instance, one of the many benefits of my idea was that it would have gotten her as far away from non-combatants as possible. Another was that we wouldn’t have to run interference with bickering Asgardians. This? Is practically nothing but squabbling semi-affiliates and civilian endangerment.”

“It’s not that bad,” Natasha said without looking up from her dossier. “Clint, do we currently have eyes on the ground in Sitwell’s vicinity? I’m not liking the discrepancies in this report on his target.”

“We do, yeah. You want me to pass an alert onto his back-up?”

“Definitely.”

He tapped a message into the terminal and submitted it. “Done. You want to tell me how this isn’t that bad?”

“Jones has a long history of prioritizing civilian safety. She’d be more useful as a battering ram or a distraction, I agree, but she can behave herself around mere mortals. Not to mention the fact that her talent is flexible enough to replace an entire squad’s worth of operatives, which lets us keep that many more people in the field.” She glanced at a display and pressed a button before leaning in closer to the mic. “We need every hand we can get right now, Tony, so if you remember to call it in when you’re coming in hot, that would be helpful.”

“Sorry, Widow.” His voice came through a scratch and hiss of static.

“Don’t be sorry, be careful,” she told him firmly. “We can’t afford to have anyone benched due to injury or equipment failure right now.”

She silenced the mic again and caught Jan’s look. “I’m not saying it’s as good an idea as it could be. I’m just saying that it’s not an utter disaster.” 

Jan shook her head and got to her feet. “Looks like I’ve got work to do, then.”

“She’s gone to ground?” Clint asked.

“In Boise.”

“Have we been able to figure out what’s in Boise?” he sighed.

“Just Boise, as far as anyone can tell,” Jan replied. “Not that we’ve had any spare analysts to put on it.”

“Call if you need any help fighting mutant potatoes,” Clint offered.

Jan pursed her lips. “If you make so much as one bad joke about either side dishes or German hand grenades, I’m going to zap you.”

“Can’t blame a man for trying,” he said, flashing her a warm grin. She shook her head but smiled back.

“Dumbass,” she muttered fondly before gathering her files and leaving.

“What are you doing?” Natasha asked after the door slid closed.

“Was that at me, or did Steve just break the laws of physics with his shield again?”

“She’s been stuck on Hank since two years before we even met them.”

“Which is why a little flirting is perfectly harmless,” he countered evenly. Natasha grunted in response.

“You can’t seriously think dumping Jones in the middle of a weird-science rodeo is going to be anything less than a complete disaster,” he said after a moment.

“I’ll admit that it’s a risk,” she told him, weighing her words carefully. “But she _does_ have a solid history of minimizing civilian involvement in high-casualty encounters.”

“And?”

“And if we can get her socially integrated with a team of high-risk non-combatant assets, we’ve got a lot less to worry about in terms of hostile activity against them, and they exert a positive influence on her behavior.” Natasha shrugged slightly. “It becomes a self-solving problem.”

“We could use more problems that solve themselves around here,” Clint said. He opened a line. “Cap, what are you _doing_ down there?”

*****

Lucy relaxed slightly. She hadn’t expected Boise to be exactly what one would expect from the name. She picked at the sleeve of her blouse and broke a donut in half, watching the pedestrian traffic through the cafe’s window. She needed to regroup. She needed to get her shit back together. She needed to lie low for a while.

“So, I need you to sign this,” Jan said, plopping a sheaf of paperwork in Lucy’s lap. She jumped and knocked over her coffee.

“Jesus Christ, where did you even _come_ from?” she gasped, blotting at her pants.

“Stuck a tracker on the car when I retrieved Thor, then homed in on the signal when it finally stopped.” She tilted her head. “There was also that deputy who somehow managed to follow you across half a state with her lights on and sirens going the entire time without stopping for gas or going insane. Secondary confirmation’s always nice to have.”

“I know there was a lot going on at the time, but I am reasonably sure I told you people to fuck off,” Lucy said, gingerly sliding the folder back at her. She took a closer look at it. “Is that an NDA? Seriously?”

“Yes, it is, yes, it’s serious, and yes, you did say something to that effect,” Jan confirmed, giving her a tight, bureaucratic smile.

“And you’re ignoring that because…?” she grumbled, finally giving up and waving her hand over the damp denim. The spilled coffee flowed back out of the cloth and into the napkin. “I just bought these jeans.”

“From a Goodwill.”

Lucy raised an eyebrow. “How long have you been following me around with this nonsense, exactly?”

“You left the tag on.”

Lucy sighed and snapped the colored plastic off.

“As to why we’re ignoring that, it’s because HYDRA’s had ideas along similar lines. Apparently you’re rather on their radar after that stunt on the helicarrier.”

“Mmm.” Lucy bit into a donut and shook her head. “I don’t think their ideas are on lines all that similar.”

“Well, it involves paying someone rather a lot of money and finding you.”

“I’m pretty sure they’re looking to shoot me, though.” She wrinkled her nose. “Which is hilarious, given how well that’s worked out for people in the past.”

Jan cleared her throat and fixed her with a look. “Whatever the ultimate feasibility of the plan, they clearly view you as a threat to be neutralized. Thor is, understandably, not particularly thrilled about that. Coulson would like very much for you to stop fucking around and sign on.”

“We do all remember that I’m a supervillain, right? And not the sort of supervillain that just had a few things go wrong here and there and now I’ve found myself on the wrong side of the law and I really want nothing more than to come in from the cold?” Lucy asked, wadding up the sodden napkins. “I’m getting more coffee. You want anything?”

“Does that mean you’re willing to hear me out?” she countered.

“It means I want more fucking coffee, and that I’m reasonably sure I have to pick between that and getting rid of you immediately.”

“Then I would like a mochaccino, please.” Jan sat down and crossed her legs primly. She looked ridiculously out of place with her skirt suit, briefcase, and perfectly done hair. Lucy rubbed her eyes and then nodded.

“Sure thing.”

“We can discuss terms while you’re having your coffee.”

Lucy took a deep breath and tried counting silently to ten. When she returned, Jan had spread out a few files and a contract on the table, carefully avoiding the patches of wood that were still damp and tacky from Lucy’s half-assed clean-up.

“You understand that this is a bad idea?” she asked.

“It’s a _terrible_ idea,” Jan said firmly. “But everyone with two licks of common sense has been overruled, so here we are.”

Lucy felt herself warming to the tiny woman with the wrist-lasers. She chuckled.

“Well, then. What exactly did you people want, anyway? To pay me five hundred bucks an hour to guard a deserted warehouse in the middle of Alaska?”

Jan sipped her coffee. “This is awful.”

Lucy shrugged. “Boise.”

“We actually had something else in mind,” she said, shuffling the paperwork and handing her a manilla envelope. “You’re familiar with Dr. Foster’s work?”

Her lips twisted, and she looked at the envelope as if it had suddenly grown fangs. “Thor’s girlfriend.”

“I assure you, her resume comprises a great deal more than that.”

“No, no. I’m sure it does. I meant, you want me to guard Thor’s girlfriend.” She felt an overwhelming urge to laugh and barely managed to choke it back.

“In an otherwise empty facility in the middle of the desert, yes.” Jan gave her a bright, hard-edged smile.

“Otherwise-empty, meaning _not_ full of Asgardian warriors and action-scientists?”

“There might be a few of those rattling around,” Jan admitted.

“So a not-empty-at-all facility in the middle of the desert.” She made a face. 

“I suppose you could put it that way, if you wanted.” Jan took another sip of her mochaccino. “Another way to look at it is that it’s a 24-hour gig with an open end-date, so you’d be pulling in twelve grand a day to drink and play solitaire.”

“That actually kind of sounds like the sort of job I avoid like the plague,” Lucy pointed out. “Not to mention highly unlikely with that particular grouping of sentient beings.”

“All right, you’d be pulling twelve grand a day to drink, put out any fires they start, keep them from hurting themselves, and hit anything that tries to kidnap and/or kill any of them. Better?”

“More honest, at least.” Lucy took another bit of pastry. “How are you paying for this?”

“It’s not coming out of the Avengers’ budget, so that’s not my problem.” Jan shrugged. “Does this mean you’re not as averse to the proposition as you originally indicated?”

“No, I’m still highly, spectacularly averse. My aversion knows no bounds. I just like to know exactly what I’m turning down. I find it helps to be clear on these things for the eventual maudlin crying-jags when I forget that moonshine’s for stripping paint off furniture and not for drinking.”

“You are aware that you’ve got a problem, right?” Jan asked.

“I’ve got a lot of problems,” Lucy retorted, tapping a pack of cigarettes against the counter. Jan eyed them hungrily. “You want one?”

“I quit,” she grated.

“So you’d pretty much bite my hand off for one.” Lucy put it away. “I’m going to be honest, here. There is no way in hell I’m taking this job. I’ve had enough bad ideas to know when something’s a bad idea, and this? Is a really bad idea. And not the fun kind that it would be worth doing anyway. The not-fun kind where everybody like, swears never to speak of it again and only gets back together ten years later when somebody’s blabbed and now everybody has to die. And I think we’re on the same side of this equation, here.” She clasped her hands together and leaned forward conspiratorially. “So, the question is, what do I have to say that will get your superiors off this trail? What do I have to give you that you can put in your report and close this off for good?”

Jan mirrored her movements and dropped her voice as she pushed the contract toward her. “You play ball with us on this, and I will personally comb through your file and put together a presentation for the Asgardians on why you cannot possibly be Loki.”

“Okay, I can work with that,” Lucy said after a moment. “Damn.” She took a deep breath and shook herself. “If you’d gone with that as your opener, you could have saved yourself a terrible mochaccino.”

“Just sign on the dotted line so we can get out of here,” Jan said, handing her a pen.


	58. Chapter 58

Lucy paged through the dossiers, her lips pursing. Jan glanced up at her after a few moments and sighed.

“Problem?” she asked.

“Nope. Nope. No problems here.” Lucy shot her an obviously fake smile. “Riding herd on crazy scientists with no sense of self-preservation, personal boundaries, or ethics has always been kind of a personal dream of mine. I am extremely excited about this career opportunity in crisis management.”

“Having second thoughts?”

“No.” Her eyes narrowed. “You?”

“You really are going to need a uniform,” Jan told her.

“I thought I made my feelings pretty clear on that clause.”

“Yes, crossing it out a million times--”

“ _Five_ times.”

“--and initialing the change was indicative of your objections. But jeans and a button-down are really not appropriate for a civilian contractor.”

“I’m not wearing a SHIELD body-glove. I mean, talk about not appropriate. I’m all for hitting up a camel-show on my days off, but it’s usually not the greatest idea to do it on the job.” Lucy ran her fingers through her hair. “You know, when _I_ ran a dude over, my license got yanked. And it was on purpose.”

Jan nodded absently. “I’m not a lawyer, but I’m reasonably sure the court system actually considers that worse than hitting someone on accident.”

“Well, yes, in terms of fault, but in terms of general skill and road-hazardness, I’d think that would be a point in my favor.”

“What was that you were you just saying about ethics?” Jan asked.

Lucy shrugged. “Neoclassical pragmatism is a _type_ of ethics, van Dyne.”

“I don’t actually think that’s correct.” Jan tapped at her tablet. “You know, Tony had a few designs based on that thing you were wearing when you got into that fight with Namor.”

“Or I could wear jeans and a t-shirt that says ‘civilian contractor,’ and we could never mention Stark designing a costume for me again. Because that’s just a little bit creepy.”

“Hmm. I’d have described treating supervillains like Barbie dolls as really creepy, personally, but I guess you’d have developed different tolerances in that regard, being a supervillain and all.”

“Seriously? One trip through Doom’s vacation castle would be enough to knock that out of even the ‘moderately creepy’ category,” Lucy informed her.

“If you promise not to elaborate, I’ll push this back to Coulson to sign off on,” Jan said quickly.

“Deal.” She shifted in her seat as the plane banked. “You guys aren’t even the slightest bit alarmed at this Model UN shit the sidekick pulled?”

“It’s Model UN. Sometimes things happen that nobody’s really proud of, and everyone involved usually goes on to lead productive or even heroic lives.”

Lucy’s eyebrows rose. “Okay, _she_ invaded Ethiopia while representing Italy. What did _you_ do?”

“It’s not important. Mistakes were made, everybody learned from them. _Moving on_.” Jan swiped to the next screen.

“No, seriously. I want to know now. What’d you do, test out the Domino Theory?”

“I accidentally weaponized the IMF, okay?” Jan snapped. “Darcy’s a nice kid. Don’t be a jerk about it.”

“It occurs to me that I suggested therapy to Thor a while ago, just based on the whole, you know, story of his life and how that could reasonably fuck somebody up pretty badly. Has he actually started seeing anybody? Because he’s apparently engaged to someone who’s almost killed him a couple of times and once had the involuntary reaction of standing there and cackling when a reaction turned out to be way more exothermic than anyone else had predicted.”

“You don’t have a whole lot of room to be throwing stones there, Jones.”

“I’m not! I’m not. I’m actually now kind of looking forward to meeting this chick, because she really sort of sounds like a lot of fun. And I’m fireproof, so there’s that. This base is going to be mostly concrete, right?”

Jan sighed and jabbed savagely at her tablet. “If you cause more than a thousand dollars in property damage, it’s coming out of your paycheck _and_ I will see to it that your uniform comes straight out of Coulson’s Junior G-Man collection.”

“Does he know you call it that?” Lucy asked.

“I have expressed my disapproval of his conservative taste in clothes on more than one occasion, yes.”

“Ever feel like taking a crack at the World Bank?”

“No.”

“Even though currency manipulation doesn’t technically count as robbery?”

“Even though. Oh, and apologizing to Canada is non-negotiable.”

“Non-negotiable like what sort of pants I wear or non-negotiable like not killing anyone unless they really, really deserve it?”

Jan gave her a flinty look.

“Right. Naturally.” She rolled her eyes. “So I have to apologize for something that I’m not really sorry for.”

“Yup.”

“Even though you guys started it.”

“Thor wasn’t acting under orders, and that thing with the Tim Horton’ses and insulting hockey was all you.”

“You’re aware I can just teleport out of here and not have to deal with any of this, right?”

“You’re aware that you’re broke and this will probably be the easiest job you can pull on short notice, right?” Jan retorted sweetly.

“Rude.”

“Honest.”

Lucy rubbed her eyes. “Maybe _I_ should be talking to somebody. I don’t know where my life went so wrong that this is what’s happening now.”

“I’ve found that usually it’s not any one thing but a series of smaller mistakes that cumulatively have significant consequences,” Jan told her.

“This a conversation you have with yourself a lot, then?” she asked. “Like, every time you find your antique hardwood furniture turned into sawdust by tropical termites?”

“There are certain aspects of this life that just have to be accepted, because they’re not going to change. In my case, it involves being tasked with recruiting people like you and, yes, sometimes coming home to find a hope chest that’s been in the family for four generations reduced to kindling by an escaped science project. In your case, it involves getting caught in avalanches coming off the mountain of bullshit you’ve generated over the years.”

Lucy scowled at her and folded a paper plane out of the in-flight safety instructions. “I’m getting the distinct impression that you’re not in the greatest of moods today.”

“This is better pay than you usually pull to guard a squad of scientists with better safety records than you usually deal with. You can’t avoid Canada forever. You’ve shown no particular objection to uniforms in the past. Stop being difficult just for the sake of being difficult.”

“You know, if you were running AIM’s HR department, they’d have taken over the world by now,” she grumbled, gathering up the paperwork.

“I am aware of that, yes,” Jan said, tossing her a pen. “Sign on the dotted line, then initial everywhere there’s a red-arrow sticker.”

“Done.” Lucy snapped her fingers. Jan sighed. “Oh, and just as an aside, I do excellent furniture-restoration work. You know, magic and all. If, for instance, you wanted that chest repaired.”

“So--hypothetically speaking--you could restore a pile of kindling after it was used _as_ a pile of kindling to set someone’s desk and five years’ worth of fields notes on fire?”

“Uh, no. No, I could not.” Lucy coughed. “Five years, huh?”

“I made copies first,” she said defensively.

Lucy thought for a moment. “And how long was it before you told him that?”

“Only a week.”

“Damn.” She raised her eyebrows. “Seriously, though, if you ever get sick of the hero gig, send a resume to AIM. You’d be making six figures, and the way they get themselves killed in action, there’s always room for advancement.”


	59. Chapter 59

Thor frowned and looked out the jet’s window, his eyes scanning the clouds.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Tony said, swiping through a set of schematics on the display. 

“I do not understand, friend Tony.”

“Idioms, Tony,” Steve reminded him without looking up from the mission briefing.

“Uh, oh. Right. What I meant was, do you want to talk about it? Something seems to be bothering you.”

“My sister has been tasked with guarding the Lady Jane and her associates,” he sighed. “I am unsure if this was a wise decision.”

“You don’t think she’s up to it, or you don’t think she’ll do it?” Steve asked. Tony rolled his eyes.

“I would trust her with my own life without hesitation,” Thor said firmly.

“But you’re not quite ready to trust her with your girlfriend’s,” Tony hazarded.

“I am capable of bearing the consequences if my judgment proves ill-founded much more readily than she.”

“Jane’s no slouch, Thor. And Jan and Hank will be there to keep an eye on things,” Steve assured him. “If she didn’t think she could keep Jones in line, I’m sure Jan would have found a way to kill the whole plan. She has a knack for getting her way on things like that.”

“That is most comforting.”

“Not to mention, she’s supposed to be protecting them from HYDRA,” Tony snorted. “They’ve been at the top of Jones’s grudge-list for _years_ now. I think we can trust her to rain down fire and brimstone on anybody they send just for kicks, at this point.”

“That is somewhat less comforting,” Thor grumbled.

*****

Jane squinted at the display and tilted her head. “Well, _that’s_ interesting…”

Lucy sighed and generated a force field around everyone without looking up from her magazine. A gout of blue flame swept over the room, then dissipated once the emergency power-dampener kicked in.

“Sorry.” She shot an apologetic glance at Lucy, who flipped through a few pages.

“Don’t worry about it. You guys aren’t even like, the tenth most irresponsible scientists I’ve ever worked with. You know what I don’t get, though? How the hell they can charge seven bucks an issue and still need to wedge in ads everywhere.”

“ _Vogue_?” Darcy asked.

“ _Supervillain Times_.” She made a face. “Aaaaaaaaaaand apparently capes are in this season. That’s gotta be an editorial plot to embarrass somebody.”

“Capes can be...attractive. If they’re done well,” Jane said defensively.

Lucy looked up at her for a moment before determinedly returning to the article.

“Sorry. That’s probably not exactly what you want to hear about your--”

“Please don’t call him my brother.”

“ _Alleged_ brother?” she ventured.

Lucy grimaced. “Not much better.”

The power stabilized, and Jane relaxed a fraction.

“Okay, everybody, reset those parameters. Let’s get ready to run that test again!” She clapped her hands and gave the harried-looking techs two thumbs up. She dropped her voice and turned back to Lucy. “Look, I just wanted to thank you again for doing this.”

“I’m getting paid a lot of money to make sure you people don’t set yourselves, or anyone else, or anything really expensive, on fire. You’re welcome, of course.” Lucy smiled magnanimously. “But it’s not a favor.”

“They said you don’t usually work for SHIELD?” Jane cocked her head.

“A bit of an understatement, actually.”

“And that you’re making a sort of exception for us?” She raised her eyebrows slightly.

Lucy sucked at her teeth for a second, sensing a trap. “Don’t you have an experiment you should be running?”

“Huh. _Interesting_.” She gave Lucy a little nod and then trotted off to join Erik.

“No, it isn’t!” Lucy shouted after her. “It’s not even a little interesting. It is of _no interest whatsoever_. There is no data at all to be gleaned from that question.” She glowered at Darcy. “Could you inform her that that was not an interesting response? Or at least not stand so fucking close to me?”

“Are you really a supervillain?” Darcy asked, trying to read the page over her shoulder.

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t this violate some sort of supervillain code?”

“No.”

“Seriously?”

Lucy sighed. “Having a code would sort of defeat the whole point of being a supervillain, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe, but if you wrote it right, it might keep people from taking number three seriously.”

“Yeah, spiked shoulder-pads are a pretty big fashion foul. I bet Doom packed the board with Latverians again.” She flipped the magazine sideways and broke the spine to get at the fine print. “You really manage to taze the god of thunder?”

“Uh-huh.” Darcy’s brows furrowed. “Okay, well, not really. I mean, I did? But he wasn’t at the time. It was,” she waved her hands vaguely, “complicated.”

“Sounds it.”

“I guess I could try again and see if it works now, but he hasn’t really done anything to deserve it since Jane stopped running him over. You really do all the stuff they say you did?”

“Of course not. It’s all hearsay, slander, and inadmissible in court. I’m a law-abiding citizen. And also I plead the Fifth.”

“Heresy?”

“I’ve seen your file. You know damn well what hearsay is.” Lucy took a deep breath and silently counted to ten. “You know what? I’m going to go do a perimeter check or something.”

“Can I read your evil _Vogue_ while you’re gone?” Darcy asked, already reaching for it.

“No. I’m taking it with me.”

“To check the perimeter?”

“It’s the fashion issue,” Lucy growled. “Which means that it doubles as a collapsible baton. Duh.”

“Isn’t SHIELD kind of in charge of the perimeter?” she pointed out, snatching at the magazine.

“Technically, yes, but they’re bad at it. Just like they’re bad at wiring, and they’re bad at wrangling you people.” She swatted Darcy’s hand away. “ _If_ you can go talk Foster out of whatever weird notion she’s formed about me, I will let you have the July issue.”

“Why would I want the July issue?”

“Because the July issue doubles as a personal cannon.”

Darcy’s brow furrowed. “How is that even possible?”

Lucy shrugged. “It’s probably technically not, but you get a lot of stuff that’s technically not possible when Doom gets his dander up because he thinks Richards has outdone him on something, and making the cover of the June issue apparently qualified.”

“I thought Dr. Richards was a good guy?”

“Yeah, well, he came closer to blowing up the Hoover Dam than anybody since Roosevelt, so whatever your thoughts on where he falls on the good/bad/ugly scale, he definitely earned his wings that month.”

“Superheroes are weird.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Lucy grumbled. “Seriously, though, go tell your boss that I’m a terrible influence and secretly planning to kill everybody.”

“And then I get the supervillain magazine that’s also a big gun?” Darcy fixed her with a skeptical look.

“Yup.”

“Deal.”

Lucy slipped out a side entrance, and Darcy made her way around the cluttered floor to where Jane and Erik were hashing over the last set of readings.

“Thor’s bizarro sister told me to tell you that she’s a terrible influence and secretly planning to kill everybody,” Darcy announced, plopping down in a chair. 

“You overheard her telling someone this?” Erik asked, looking slightly alarmed. 

Darcy puffed out her cheeks. “No, she _told_ me to tell you that. Well, not you. Jane.”

“Wow. She’s really phoning it in, isn’t she?” Jane mused. She shook her head, and Darcy shrugged. “Thor had me kind of worried, the way he talked about some of the things she’d done.”

“She doesn’t worry you? She worries me.” Erik glanced at his notes and then opened a panel to check the circuits.

“Sure, she’s dangerous. Probably even _really_ dangerous. But let’s face it, Agent Coulson stole all of our stuff and practically threatened to dump our corpses in the middle of the desert the first time we met him, and we got over that.”

“You and I recall that event somewhat differently, Jane,” he said.

“They stole my iPod just to be jerks. It was like the TSA, only I wasn’t even flying anywhere.”

Jane spread her hands. “See? Darcy agrees with me. Not to mention, she’s extremely useful. I thought they just wanted everyone in one place so they could babysit us more effectively, but she’s already saved us a couple of days just in equipment we haven’t had to replace.”

“Admittedly, but at what cost?”

“More than you guys are getting paid, less than the electric bill this place is running up,” Lucy broke in. “And also maybe a few small riots in like New York and Vegas and LA from the displaced entropy. New Yorkers get surprisingly upset about getting double the number of hotdogs that they actually paid for, which is unexpected but has promise for future applications. Long story short, I’m getting paid a fair rate, which I’m sure is what was under discussion.”

“That was fast,” Darcy commented.

“Yeah, well, the perimeter’s like a hundred feet of dirt. And it’s got fifty-three individual camera angles on it. And I’m a magician. I have _magic_.”

“Weird. She says magic like you say astrophysics,” Darcy said, elbowing Jane in the ribs. Jane elbowed her back.

“I do not say astrophysics like that,” Jane hissed.

“The acoustics in here are terrible, and everybody can totally hear both of you,” Lucy said flatly. She glanced at Jane. “And you do sound like a crazy person when you say astrophysics.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to say anything, because it’s _rude_ , but you sound like a crazy person when you say magic.” Jane crossed her arms.

“Huh.” Darcy frowned at a clipboard. “Why are you listed on the roster as ‘Loki’? Is that your codename or something?”

Lucy stared at her for a moment before swiping the clipboard, turning on her heel, and stomping off toward the office. “You bastards had better update that goddamned personnel list right this fucking second, you hear me?”

“That was mean,” Erik sighed.

“And a little funny,” Darcy retorted, rolling up the forgotten magazine and flicking it experimentally. It hardened and unfolded, and she grunted appreciatively.

“Do you really think the wiring’s bad?”

“I think the wiring’s not up to the demands we’re putting on it,” Jane said, spreading her hands. “But we’ve made it work with worse. I guess when you’re trying to run this sort of equipment in a safehouse on short notice, you’re not going to get the best circumstances.”

Erik froze, his frown deepening.

“You look like you just remembered you left the faucet running,” Darcy said, poking him.

“HYDRA’s facility was completely up to the task,” he explained. “There was nothing ad-hoc or improvised about it.”

Jane blinked. “So they either got _phenomenally_ lucky, or…”

“Or they had everything planned well in advance,” he agreed.

“Okay, that sounds like something we should tell,” she looked around the lab, “somebody. Somebody higher up than a tech, probably.”

“I just texted Agent Coulson,” Darcy told them.

“Well, that takes care of that, then.” Jane’s eyes strayed back to the monitors. “Do you think it would be safe to just do one more run-through before Thor’s sister gets back? We _did_ just fix everything.”

Erik hesitated. “I don’t know. There is a reason they hired her, after all.”

“Yeah, to keep us all in one place so they could watch us easier,” Darcy scoffed.

“It can’t hurt that much, right?” Jane was already fitting her safety goggles back on.

Erik pursed his lips. “There is an objective upper limit to possible damage, yes.”

“Let’s go, then.”

*****

“I don’t care if it came down from Fury himself, this is not okay, and I want it changed.” Lucy tapped the screen. “I don’t want a codename, and if I absolutely _have_ to have one, it’s not going to be ‘Loki.’ It’s just not. I will go for Disco Stu before I go for Loki. Get it updated.”

“And I am telling you, we don’t have override authority for that database. It’s read-only access. You want it changed, you gotta take it up with a full agent. Which we are not,” the tech in front of her explained patiently, her expression teetering between annoyed and bored. “You’re going to have to go be a prima donna at somebody who rates that sort of access if you want it changed.”

“Prima donna? Prima donna? I have not yet _begun_ to prima donna, lady,” she hissed. “Now I want--oh, son of a _bitch_. I think I just got tricked by a pack of action-scientists. Gotta go, my scientist-sense is tingling. I want that thing updated by the time I’m finished making sure they don’t blow up the building!”

She darted off, almost skidding on the concrete floor before regaining her footing.

“Days like this, I really don’t think we get paid enough,” the tech muttered. Her companion shook his head.

“Dental package is killer, though. Plan I had before was so bad my kid got stuck with headgear she was picking up pirate radio on.”

They both jumped when the power flickered badly and alarms started sounding.

“Maybe not the best turn of phrase to use just now,” the tech suggested.

Lucy rounded the corner at top speed, berating herself under her breath for having let the trio out of her sight. They might not be quite as bad as AIM scientists, but they still had an unhealthy attraction to powerful equipment and ill-advised experiments. And Thor was in love with one of them, and friends with the other two. Which didn’t matter to her at all, because that would be foolish. She clipped a corner and stumbled to a halt, glaring at the three of them. They jumped, guilty looks on Jane and Erik’s faces. She looked around suspiciously.

“You didn’t do anything.”

“Er, no,” Jane said quickly. “The thought didn’t even, uh, cross our minds.”

“But we’re on back-up power, and the alarms have been tripped.”

They shrugged, bewildered, and she sighed.

“Well, guess who’s all heading for the shelters?” she asked with false cheer.

“Jones!” Jan stormed into the lab, waving a tablet.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m on it. They’ll be in the shelter in under thirty seconds.” She glared at Darcy, who resolutely ignored her in favor of a letter to the editor. “Wait, is that the magazine I specifically said you couldn’t have?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are the shelters ant-proof?” Jan demanded.

“Uh...probably? How is that a relevant question?” She squinted at the security feed on the tablet. “Will you hold that still for like three seconds? At least, if you’re trying to show me something on it. If that’s just a cam session with some rando that this interrupted, I’m both very sorry and also please feel free to wave it faster so that I don’t accidentally wind up needing to bleach my eyes.”

Jan shoved it straight out in front of her and held it a few inches from Lucy’s face.

“Okay, so you’ve got ants? I don’t see why that’s a problem. Just have Pym go talk to them and tell them to stop gnawing on whatever.”

“They’re _three feet tall_ , Jones.”

“Oh.” Lucy coughed slightly and glanced at her bare wrist. “Hey, look at the time. I’m on break. See you in fifteen minutes!”

“Can’t Dr. Pym still tell them not to do whatever it is they’re doing?” Jane asked.

Jan pinched the bridge of her nose. “He tried. They said something to the effect of being big now and not having to listen to him anymore.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t even care what you did, why you did it, or what you were trying to do. Just go fix it. Now.”

“Okay, so long as we understand that I’m officially denying all knowledge of these quote-end-quote ‘giant ants’ and that I accept no responsibility for them whatsoever and also that I totally did not think this was going to happen, I will go and deal with them,” Lucy said. “I’m going to need a can of Raid and a bee-suit.”

“ _Jones_.”

“Fine, fine, going.” Darcy fell in behind her. “What are you doing?”

“You’re assigned to Dr. Foster, Lewis,” Jan pointed out.

“But I want to see how you kill ants big enough to ride.”

“That actually would be useful knowledge to have,” Jane said, frowning. “How many hazmat suits are there in this facility?”

“Jesus Christ, how did you people make it out of high school without maiming yourselves? “ Lucy snarled. “Nobody who’s not fireproof is coming with me. I’m not having a repeat of the bumblebee situation.”

Jan turned slowly, her eyes glittering. “The bumblebee situation.”

“Yeah?” Lucy backed away warily.

“That _thing_ with the _bumblebees_. That was _you_.”

“It was an oversight,” she protested. “They weren’t supposed to do that. Is what I’m sure the person actually responsible would say.”

“They breathed _fire_.”

“The giant, fire-breathing bees were you?” Darcy asked. “Those were actually kind of cool.” Jan shot her a venomous look. “I mean uncool. Definitely uncool.”

“They were just supposed to be a huge, buzzing, fluffy distraction. I sort of reconfigured the heat exchange mechanism so it would still function in an insect the size of a motorcycle, and I forgot that sugars are actually fairly flammable. Sue me.”

“You started a forest fire. We had to evacuate a military base.” 

“For which I’m sure I’m very sorry,” Lucy huffed.

“Really? Because I haven’t heard anyone sound that unapologetic in a very long time,” Jan said testily.

“Does this mean you guys aren’t renewing my contract?”

“That depends on how quickly you get up there and take care of those ants. What the hell were you thinking, anyway?”

“They were a proof of concept. I was thinking that I could make them, and see if they worked, and then they’d sort of pass out and fall over in a few minutes,” Lucy explained.

“You put them together with an expiration date?” Erik asked, shooting Jane a pointed look. “That at least was a bit of good thinking.”

“Mistakes are how we learn, Erik,” Jane muttered, flushing slightly.

“See?” Lucy demanded. Jan scowled at her.

“You forget to set the timer, then?”

“I, well, not exactly.” She shook her head. “They’re too big to really breathe. It’s all to do with, uh, volume-to-surface, uh, tension ratios. And they’ve got these, um, tubules? In their joints? And...”

They stared at her, Jan’s expression a growing mix of disbelief and exasperation.

“Okay, look, I _may_ have fallen asleep half-way through the NatGeo special on super-bugs,” she confessed. “But come on, the principle is sound. It’s _science_.”

“Oh, God.” Jan rolled her eyes.

“What?” Lucy demanded, affronted at her tone.

“I’m not a magician.”

“No.”

“But I’m reasonably sure when you dump a lot of magic into something like this, you can’t just rely on scientific laws still working properly.” She folded her arms, and Lucy got an upside-down view of one of the ants thoughtfully biting a concrete pylon in half.

“Don’t be stupid. Of course they do. It’s not like gravity switched off just because I converted a certain amount of metal into gelatin, sugar, and artificial flavoring.” She sighed dramatically. “It’s just that sometimes, if you’re not careful, you can accidentally compensate for certain things you didn’t mean to compensate for, because magic is a living force and maybe you were a little punchy from not having slept in three days.”

“Just get up there and fix it,” Jan growled. “And _nobody else_ is going with her. You want to do field observations, you do them using the security feed, from the emergency shelter.”

“Nuts,” Darcy muttered.

“You are all absolutely unbelievable.” Jan rubbed her eyes. “Absolutely and completely unbelievable.”


	60. Chapter 60

“What kind of incantation is ‘Shrink, you bastards, shrink,’ anyway?” Hank grumbled, staring at the monitor.

“I don’t think it’s meant to be an actual incantation,” Jan said, shaking her head.

“Dr. Strange always uses incantations.” He crossed his arms and frowned at the screen.

“I think Stephen may have spoiled us a little.”

“I still wish you’d let me take another shot at it,” he sighed.

“Hank, I know you feel like this is a failure, but I genuinely don’t think you want to be up there right now,” she said firmly. “And since it was my call instead of yours, you’re staying put.”

“Even though I accidentally wrecked your hope chest?”

“I feel like we’re kind of even on that one, and my God, she can’t keep her mouth shut about anything, can she?” Jan asked.

“Her interpretation of the NDA seems a little shaky, yeah. Though I guess technically it’s not really disclosure if everyone you’re discussing it with already knows about it.”

“The hope chest that those termites ate, and then she set your notes on fire?” Darcy asked, taking another bite of a candy bar.

“She told you about it, too?” Hank asked unhappily.

“No, we heard about that from the civilian liaison when we first started,” Jane explained, flushing slightly. “It was an example of why we should be a little, uh, more careful than maybe we might otherwise be in our own labs. Sort of a ‘respect other people’s equipment’ kind of thing. It was part of orientation. They were really big on etiquette being a little more important in an organization full of superhumans and ninja spies than in a lab full of undergrads and interns. Though _clearly_ they’ve never met scientists working with biohazards who are about to get their funding cut, because whoa boy, you don’t want to steal their parking spaces.”

“No, you most certainly do not. But Mr. Stark also told us about it,” Erik added. “His account was slightly more...colorful than the liaison’s.”

“Of course,” Jan said flatly. “It would have been.”

“Guess we just kind of assumed you knew everybody else knew,” Darcy offered around a mouthful of chocolate.

“It didn’t seem to be much of a secret,” Jane agreed. “Sorry about that.”

“Not exactly your fault,” Hank muttered. “Remind me to talk to Tony once this is over.” He rubbed his eyes. “What is she _doing_?”

Darcy glanced at him. “Seriously? You can’t tell she’s setting things on fire?”

“Entomology typically involves far fewer explosions, Darcy,” Jane hissed. “Sorry, Dr. Pym. She didn’t mean to be rude.”

“I didn’t….I mean, that’s not what I was asking,” he groaned.

“You’d be surprised how much sometimes catches on fire when it comes to entomology,” Jan said, an edge creeping into her tone.

“I’m sorry?” Hank shrank back slightly.

“For?”

“I don’t know, I just felt like...it might be a smart thing to say, given the circumstances.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

Jan shook her head and clicked her comm. “Are you done dicking around up there?”

“I have not yet _begun_ to dick around!” Lucy’s voice was tinny and distorted and a half-second off from the visual feed when it came from the speakers. Jan sighed.

“Pick up the pace. You’re on overtime in half an hour, which means you’re off the clock in twenty-nine minutes.”

“Aw, come on.”

“I’ll authorize time-and-a-half if you’re saving the world. Whacking at giant ants’ antennae with batons and claiming that you’re negotiating with them does not count,” she said firmly.

“But--”

“ _Especially_ since ants communicate primarily through pheromones, chemical trails, and cuticular hydrocarbons.”

Hank winced and started to say something, cutting off abruptly when Darcy jabbed him in the ribs.

“Dude, just don’t,” she staged-whispered.

“But--”

“No, I mean it.” She shook her head sharply. “Don’t.”

“I wouldn’t,” Jane chimed in, tipping her bag of popcorn at him. “I’ve had interns just pick up and leave doing that.”

Hank ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “Where did you even get that?”

“What, the popcorn?” she asked.

“Yes, the popcorn.”

“Creature comforts are important, Dr. Pym,” Erik sighed, popping a few kernels into his mouth.

“If we’re gonna be stuck here watching the show on a screen instead of getting out there and taking some readings on the...stuff,” Darcy waved vaguely at the pile of abandoned equipment, “we might as well have popcorn.”

“We never had popcorn when I was running experiments,” Hank said.

“That’s because having crumbs and spills around could _ruin_ your experiments, Hank,” Jan sighed. “At least the ones to do with hymenopterans. And I can’t imagine it would much help with the Pym-particle ones, either.” She tapped her comm. “Jones, is that a _grenade_?”

“Yes?”

“Is she taunting them with it?” Jane asked, tilting her head.

“I think so, which is _clearly_ illogical, because ants don’t understand that sort of behavior,” Hank snorted.

“I don’t know. Based on your transcript of that attempt to get them off our lawn using your translator, they seem to have the basics down,” Darcy pointed out.

“Where did you get a grenade? We don’t _have_ any grenades on this base.”

“Fortunately, I don’t have to rely on SHIELD’s sadly depleted stores for explosives, Wasp,” Lucy told her, shouting it at the camera.

“Does she even have a comm?” Hank asked.

“Yes.” Jan touched her tablet. “Hanging off the back of an office chair. In a storage closet.”

“Well, then.”

“Wait, we don’t have any grenades here?” Darcy demanded, frowning. “So if HYDRA does show up, it’s just what, sidearms and rifles?”

“And two superheroes, whatever Jones currently counts as, and three anti-aircraft installations,” Jan added.

“Oh, right.”

“We have anti-aircraft guns?” Jane asked, perking up.

“Yes, and no, you can’t repurpose any of them.”

“But--”

“No. Stop trying to turn everything into huge telescopes.”

“I actually have a prototype ion-cannon I was thinking would probably pack more of a punch than just a projectile,” Jane grumbled.

“Why would you even...You know what, never mind. I’m just going to assume it started out having a legitimate scientific purpose,” Jan said. “Unlike that grenade belt. How did she hide a grenade belt in a pair of Dockers?”

“Magician,” Darcy said. “I’m just a little disappointed she didn’t pull it out of her sleeve. And that there isn’t a top hat or anything involved. I feel cheated.”

“There is sort of a lack of theatrics.” Jane bit her lip. “Do you think we should say something? I mean, you get a lot more grants if you can really dazzle a committee. We could give her a few pointers.”

“Guys? While I understand the frustration inherent in a magic-themed supervillain who couldn’t by all appearances possibly take being a magic-themed supervillain less seriously--and believe me, _I get it_ \--please do not tell her about it or give her pointers. About anything.” Jan rubbed her temples. “I do not need a magic-themed supervillain putting on a cape, turning the base into a haunted house, and yelling about what everyone’s going to rue.”

“You think she’d react poorly, then?” Erik asked.

“Well, I’ve got footage from the time she turned half the squirrels in Chicago into cane rats and stomped through downtown shouting that at last they were feeling the full weight of her revenge, so I’m going to go with ‘yes.’”

“Revenge for what?”

“Something about deep-dish pizzas and an inappropriate amount of sauce.”

“Right on.” Darcy made a fist, and they stared at her for a second. “What? I’ve got strong feelings about pizza.”

Jan rolled her eyes and touched her comm. “Jones, on your left. 8 o’clock.”

“And there’s the pillar of fire,” Hank sighed. “That was the last one, wasn’t it?”

“How should I know? I’m not the one who decided to do an uncontrolled magical experiment on ants during a crisis,” Jan grumbled. “That’s the last of the ones we _counted_. I’m not going to commit to that being the last giant ant we’re going to run into today.”

“Can somebody turn the water heater for the decontamination shower on?” Lucy snapped over the cctv feed. “Because this is just _so gross_.”

“She’s just lucky they weren’t _Camponotus_ ants,” Hank grunted.

“Ew, Hank.” Jan made a face. “Please don’t give her ideas.”

“Do I even want to know?” Darcy asked.

Jan shuddered a little. “They turn into glue-bombs when they get too riled up. It’s really disgusting.”

“And a miracle of the eusocial caste system,” Hank said testily.

“Okay, a really disgusting miracle of the eusocial caste system,” she conceded. He looked slightly mollified. “Not the sort of thing you want to have running around in a size that’s big enough to ride.”

“I should think not,” Erik murmured. 

“Oh, no.” Jan looked at her tablet, which had begun flashing a red stripe. “Oh, that’s not good.”

Hank looked over her shoulder. “It’s not as bad as it could be, though. We should have time to get everyone evacuated. Especially with Jones covering us.”

“HYDRA’s crashing the party?” Jane sighed.

“AIM, actually. They probably registered the spike in energy usage here and are trying to swipe some tech while most of SHIELD is tied up elsewhere,” Jan explained. “Opportunistic bastards. Ordinarily we’d just call for reinforcements and dig in, but they’re not going to get here in time.”

“I didn’t think AIM was that big a threat anymore? Thor said something about their robots gaining free will and finding out about collective bargaining.”

“They’re unpredictable,” Hank confessed. “Most of the time, they’re not a real problem. You punch a few dozen guys with practically no training, read everyone their rights, and drop them off at a containment facility. Every so often, though, they turn up with something that has the potential to destroy half the country’s infrastructure within a week, and it’s all downhill from there.”

“Since we’re not ready to deal with a worst-case scenario, and it would represent a secondary goal in this case, SOP is to strip everything down, load it up, and move out,” Jan finished. “So pack your bags and get them on the plane.”

“Did they get the dead engine working again, then?” Erik asked.

“The dead engine?” Jan repeated, taking a deep breath.

“There was an electrical problem with one of the engines. They found it doing a post-flight check after we put down.” Jane paused. “They, uh, seemed like they were going to tell you right away? But from the look on your face I’m guessing this is the first you’ve heard of it?”

“The universe is mocking me,” Jan gritted. “Okay. Everybody go pack your bags. Prioritize the essentials--proprietary equipment, unpublished data, prototypes, experimental designs, that sort of thing. Anything we don’t want mad scientists bent on world domination to get a chance to strip naked and roll around in before using it against democracy.”

“That is a weirdly specific image,” Darcy said, narrowing her eyes.

“AIM scientists have weirdly specific ways of expressing their love for technology,” Hank told her, looking pained.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“I want this done ASAP. I’m going to touch base with transport and see where we’re at with this mechanical problem.” Jan turned on her heel and stalked out. “Jones, we’ve got incoming. I need you to buy us time.”


	61. Chapter 61

Hank watched the satellite feed of AIM’s ship crashing and rolling for the third time, his hand over his mouth.

“What, exactly, did you do?” Jan sighed, flipping through the cargo plane’s schematics.

“Replaced all their fuses with pennies.”

Jan stopped for a moment, then started again. “Pennies.”

“More than one way to start a fire, Wasp.”

“All that was from fuses not blowing.”

“Well, I also transported the rest of the huge ants aboard. They wanted to help.”

Jan took a deep breath. “The rest of the ants.”

“Yeah.”

“Meaning that you did not, in fact, actually kill all of the ants that you turned into Shetland ponies.”

“I’m not sure I like where your tone tells me you’re going with this,” Lucy said defensively. “But I totally got all the ones that were being huge douchebags about it.”

“They’re _ants_. They’re _all_ huge douchebags,” Jan hissed, slamming her hand down on the table. “How could that _possibly_ escape you?”

“Well, we had a long talk, and the ones that wanted to help seemed cool,” she huffed. “You know. For ants.”

“Ants lie, Jones.”

“That’s something of an exaggeration, Jan,” Hank broke in, shifting his weight from one foot to the other uneasily.

“Hank,” she gritted.

“I know that voice, bro,” Lucy muttered.

“ _Jones_.”

“Van Dyne.” They stared at her. “Sorry. I thought we were just being melodramatic in the middle of a crisis. You know, having a moment. Yay, heroes! You know?” She pumped a fist half-heartedly in the air. “No? Nobody? Meh. Fuck all y’all. I’m gonna go--”

“You are going to stay right here until we fix this.” Jan scowled at her before shifting her gaze back to Hank. “We both know damn well that ants can lie, Hank. Can we please not rehash this right now?”

“It seems relevant, though,” he tried, spreading his hands. “And it might be more accurate to say that they just don’t have very good memories.”

“Hank, they’re liars. They lie. _They tell lies._ ” She ran her fingers through her hair and straightened her shoulders. “Okay, so they’re how far out?”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “Fine. Thirty miles of bad road. Since most of their land transport options are short-range hauling equipment, they’re at least half an hour away. A more reasonable estimate would be an hour. Assuming that they’re not all dead of giant-ant bites.”

“I think we should assume that at least some of them have managed to survive giant ants. They spend what I used to think was a ridiculous amount of time prepping for ‘50s sci-fi-movie disasters.”

“Yeah, with the way they operate, it’s probably a little less time than they should spend,” Lucy said. “Unlike HYDRA, though, they’re really good at making sure evasive maneuvers or a crash doesn’t see everybody dead of unsecured objects inside the cabin, so they’re definitely not out of the game _just_ because they crashed. Though, on the other hand, with something like this, they might just give up and write the base off as too well-defended to be worth it.”

Jan shot her a sour look. “More likely, they’ll assume we’ve got something really, really exciting stowed away here and that they’ve hit the motherlode.”

“Granted, but the former _has_ happened. Once or twice.” Lucy shrugged. “It’s not entirely outside the realm of possibility.”

“Let’s not count on it happening, though. An hour is...not as much time as it could be,” she muttered. “But it’s still enough.”

“Their ship _is_ down, you know. We can take ‘em. Easily. There are like literally tens of thousands of more ants out there just _begging_ to be huge and people-eating. I could--”

“Orders are orders, though I do appreciate your confidence. And, I guess, the offer of visiting an overwhelming amount of grievous bodily harm on our enemies.”

“Damn straight, it’d be overwhelming. That’s what I’m here for.” Lucy grinned, and Hank snorted. “And, you know, I _am_ pulling fifty percent more than I usually would on this, so I feel a certain obligation to offer the full range of services. You know. Mayhem, death, destruction, a certain apocalyptic flavor to the normal explosive combustion. In fact--”

“You can’t just magic the engine back to life?” Hank asked, pointing to the plane.

“Can I finish a fucking sentence?” she snarled. “Jesus Christ, you two.”

“Sorry.”

She heaved a sigh and stalked around the table to look at the schematics.

“See, the sticking point of that would be that I kind of don’t know the first goddamned thing about how planes engines really work. So me just magicking it back into functionality would be a bad idea,” she answered, chewing her thumbnail. “Like, catastrophically bad. Hamster wheels would probably be involved.”

“You don’t know how engines work?” he demanded, his brows furrowing. “Really?”

“Well, I looked into it at one point, and the whole thing seemed a little complex and kind of boring and I sort of gave up and I cannot believe I’m fucking defending that decision to you.” She stuck her tongue out at him. “Fuck off. I didn’t hire on as a fucking engineer. You want someone who can fix this properly, you should have brought Stark. Or Rhodes. Or that Danvers lady. Or like literally anyone but me. Because I’m here to hit people really hard and make sure your tame scientists don’t melt a hole in the planet and I think I saw some clause about keeping the Asgardians off YouTube and that’s about it.”

“She’s kind of got a point, Hank,” Jan said.

“See?” Lucy frowned and cocked her head. “I mean, I could make it weightless and sort of propel it along, but I’m guessing nobody would get on it.”

“That guess would be correct,” Jan said. “I can fly, and I still wouldn’t get on a plane with that happening. I need this equipment on that truck. As soon as magically possible. Loaded, tied down, full works. No anti-gravity wells that shoot everything to the moon, no messing with friction, no temporary suspension of the laws of thermodynamics. No random magic that could get us all killed. Just be reasonably mundane for once in your career.”

“Sure thing,” Lucy said. “I'll get right on it. This our only truck?”

“Yes,” Hank sighed, crossing his arms. “And we’re lucky to have that. All the evacuation plans for this base assumed air transport was on the table.”

“Those are pretty shitty evacuation plans,” she said.

“Tell me about it,” Jan grunted.

“So, who’s going to be driving this thing once it’s loaded?”

“Uh.” Jan looked at the roster. “Um.”

“Seriously?” Lucy sighed.

“Shit.” She rubbed her forehead. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“So, the answer is that I’m driving this thing.”

“I thought we agreed no weird magic that could get us all killed?” Hank asked.

Lucy made a face.

“Do you have any idea what a fucking assclown you feel like when you go through the effort of hijacking a truck only to find out that nobody in the entire gang knows how to drive said truck?” she asked. “I mean, hypothetically speaking, if you were to engage in that sort of criminal activity. Which I wouldn’t. Law-abiding citizen.”

“So you know how to drive one of these things?” Jan asked.

“Well, I do _now_.”

*****

Jane scanned through her list while Darcy pawed through the crate.

“Okay, that’s everything. Or at least it should be.” She sighed. “Why did AIM have to attack now? We were just getting some really good data back.”

“Look on the bright side,” Darcy chirped, rearranging to of the equipment slightly. She tamped the packing paper down and puffed out her cheeks. “Could we really not find the foam this stuff came in? It’s just so much better.”

“We’re lucky we’re not packing it in straw, Darcy,” Erik sighed. “And we may not have to take it anywhere. I believe your sister-in-law was filling their ship stem to stern with more ants.”

“We’re not married,” Jane protested. “Though I wouldn’t say no if he asked. Unless it meant being queen of Asgard. In which case oh my god, would I have to think about it, because I really do not understand that culture yet.” She looked at Darcy. “You said something about a bright side?”

“I was kind of hoping you had one that you could just pretend I brought up,” Darcy said, fitting the lid down. “Anybody seen Mewmew?”

“You know, I didn’t want to bring it up before, but that’s kind of not an appropriate name for a claw hammer,” Jane told her, handing the pink-handled hammer over.

“But it’s a super-cute claw hammer,” Darcy protested. “See? It’s got little daisies stenciled on it and everything. And Thor gets to name _his_ hammer whatever he wants.”

“That’s because Mjolnir’s sort of alive,” Jane pointed out. “And he didn’t name it. Somebody else did.”

“Mewmew could be sort of alive.” Darcy popped a pair of nails between her lips and started hammering the lid on. “I mean, we’ve never demonstrated conclusively that she isn’t.”

“But…”

Erik shook his head, and Jane subsided. “And please don’t let her catch you calling her my sister-in-law. I heard she turned some chick into an octopus for that.”

“I turned some chick into an octopus because she threatened to gut me with a beer bottle if I didn’t,” Lucy corrected. They all jumped, and Darcy missed the nail.

“Oh my god, did you really have to turn up right that second?” she wailed, clutching her thumb. “I mean, literally just another two seconds, and that wouldn’t have happened. Goddammit, Mewmew.”

“I’m sure I’m sorry.” Lucy grimaced. “I think there might be some ice somewhere over there. In the break room. Maybe. And ‘Mewmew’?”

Erik put his finger to his lips, and Jane mouthed “no” at her.

“What is wrong with you two?” she demanded, staring at them.

“You’re the worst.” Darcy massaged her thumb.

“I am not even close to being the worst right now. Solidly middle-of-the-road. I am, in fact, saving the day. I’ll let you know when I start being the worst again, I promise.” She frowned at the hammer. “Please tell me that Mewmew is not the hammer.”

“Shouldn’t we be loading all these boxes onto...whatever transport has been arranged?” Erik cut in.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m here for. We’ve decided to evacuate by truck, because the plane fell victim to SHIELD’s ‘screw maintenance, we’ve got missions to run’ philosophy, and we forgot to schedule anybody who knows how to fix it.”

“Shotgun,” Darcy said quickly.

“I--no. No, I don’t think so. We actually have people on the payroll for that,” Lucy sighed. “People with better aim and probably slightly less itchy trigger-fingers.”

“Have you _met_ most of the agents here?” she retorted.

“Okay, point.”

“You’re not serious,” Jane said. “Darcy, you’re not technically a combatant.”

“I was the junior skeet-shooting champion in my district for three years running. How much different could it be?”

Lucy shrugged. “Well, you usually don’t lead nearly as much with people as you would with okay, _why_ are you all looking at me like that?”

“Can we maybe just get everything loaded and stop talking about murder?” Jane asked weakly.

“Fine, fine. Everybody out of the way.” Lucy paused. “Okay, everybody out of the way of everything where the lid’s actually been nailed down. And maybe everybody get on nailing the lids down where they’re not, because I’m definitely not interested in taking a five-pound wooden frisbee right to the face when one of these comes loose.”

Erik nodded and picked up the hammer.

“Oh, hey, Mewmew found you worthy,” Darcy said. Jane and Lucy gaped at her.

“Lao Tzu on a skateboard. You seriously fucking named your hammer.”

“Can you not speak to my assistant that way?” Jane snapped.

“Listen, lady, I’ll--”

An explosion made the floor tremble under their feet. Lucy’s head snapped up. “Oh, shit. That’s not good. That’s not fucking good at all.”

“What?” Erik demanded.

“They are so fucking early. Wasp’s gonna fucking kill me. Get all this shit on carts and get it up top. Burn anything you can’t take.” They blinked at her, and she waved her hands. “Like, fucking _now_ , guys.”

She vanished, and Jane looked around. “Okay, okay, okay. Carts. Hand-trucks. Um, Erik, I guess never mind about the lids. Darcy, help me with this.”

Lucy darted through the hangar, trying to get a look at the security feeds. She stopped short when she saw what had caused the explosion.

“Where the hell did they get a giant mechanical centipede?”

“I think that’s actually a giant mechanical Möbius strip,” Hank said. “A giant, mechanical, weaponized Möbius strip.”

“God I hate these fucking fuckers,” Lucy groaned. “Who does this? I mean, honestly.”

“Just go blow it up before it smashes too much to get the truck out of or kills everybody or--” Hank broke off after he found himself talking to thin air. “Jan? We should probably get everyone under cover, because Jones is really not used to watching out for where she drops burning debris.”

“Kind of busy right now, Hank!” Jan called back. “In fact, if you could tag me out, that would be really, really helpful!”

Hank sighed when he saw her fighting with a pair of giant ants.

“Liars,” he muttered savagely, running toward her. “Six-legged, pheromone-driven liars.”

“Ready?” she asked when he drew close enough to attract their attention.

“As I’ll ever be. Just make sure Jones doesn’t kill us all,” he grunted, firing up his translator.

“No stupid risks,” she said tightly. “Love you!”

She winged upward and out, twisting through the mangled bay door. Lucy was prying at a section of paneling with a crowbar.

“Stay down, you miscarriage of geometry,” she snarled, ripping the metal apart.

“Would you just melt it and get it over with?” Jan yelled, looping back around and targeting a pair of leg mounts. The legs sheared off and went wide instead of stabbing at Lucy’s back.

“Tried that already,” she panted. “It’s like the fucking Terminator, it just oozed right back into shape and kept coming.”

“How about you freeze it, then?” Jan shot another pair of legs off, then sighed when the previous two legs crawled back towards the machine. It rippled forward with surprising speed, almost clipping one of her wings.

“Gonna have to do better than that, you stupid thing,” Lucy crowed, sticking to it easily.

“Jones!”

“Yeah, yeah, I see ‘em.” She snapped her fingers, and the three turrets that had emerged from the other edge of the loop were suddenly covered in jam.

She put her hands flat against the metal and froze everything solid. Jan hit it with a few well-targeted bolts of energy, and the construction shattered into a rain of silver shards.

“An hour, you said!” Jan snapped, catching her hand as she fell.

“I didn’t know they had a robotic topographical concept with them, did I?” Lucy shot back. “You know I can get myself down, right?”

“I’m not above dropping you to test that claim,” Jan gritted, coasting into a gentle descent.

“We should probably get out of here before it melts and forms back up.” She twisted to get a better look at the road, and Jan yelped and grabbed the back of her shirt to keep her grip.

“Stop that!”

“Will you calm down?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, is me being reflexively upset at almost dropping a human being forty feet _annoying you_?” Jan hissed.

“All right, all right. You have a point. I apologize.” She twisted again, trying to get a look at the wreckage.

“You do that one more time, and I’m grabbing your hair,” Jan told her.

“It’s already melting. We really need to step on it,” Lucy said. “Okay, I’m teleporting. Don’t freak out.”

“Why would I _oh my god oh my god oh my god_!” Jan dropped her to the floor and barely banked in time to avoid flying straight into the wall. “You might have specified that you were teleporting _both of us_.”

“Sorry if I was unclear on that point.” Lucy brushed herself off.

“I hate you so much right now.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot right after fights.” Lucy shot her a dazzling smile. “For what it’s worth, I appreciate that your first instinct isn’t to let a monster robot kill me. You want to find Dr. Boyfriend and get your people loaded up? I’m going to make sure the Scientists Three are accounted for and fire up the mack truck.”

“I want to go back to the lab and not have to deal with anything more alarming than an invitation to a Baxter Building potluck for a week,” Jan grumbled. “Can’t you just teleport the base to someplace nice and safe?”

“I’m going to refer you back to every argument against me just magicking the plane back to life and add the extra complicating factors of multiple living beings and at least three pieces of equipment generating strong, fluctuating energy fields.”

“Right.” Jan shook herself and caught her breath. “Go get the team, and get everybody back here asap.”

She nodded sharply and flew back toward the ongoing scuffle between Hank, a few techs, and an ant that came up to their waists. Lucy rubbed her shoulder absently and vanished.


	62. Chapter 62

“See? Isn’t this fun?” Darcy asked, patting the rifle’s stock. She poked at the radio until she found a station that wasn’t entirely static and grinned at the landscape rolling past them at sixty miles per hour.

Lucy shot her a sidelong glare and checked her mirrors again. “No, this is not fun. This is _embarrassing_.”

“More or less embarrassing than being on the top ten worst-dressed villains list?”

“Okay, first thing? That is bullshit. There is absolutely no way that flip-flops are worse than assless chaps, bucket helmets, moon boots, or weird bodystockings. None.”

“So it was personal?” Darcy snorted.

“Probably, yes.” She took a quick drag on her cigarette and then stuck it back out the window when Darcy wrinkled her nose.

“Aren’t you wearing like five nicotine patches right now?” she asked.

“Six,” Lucy corrected. “And second thing--”

“Is that even healthy?”

“Not according to the package, no. Anyway, second thing, it is still not as embarrassing as working with SHIELD and finding out that you actually are, for really real, the most appropriate person on site to be up here with me. That just about takes the cake.”

“I don’t see why you’re so surprised. I handled security for Jane and Erik when Thor first showed up,” Darcy pouted.

“Granted, I’ve heard pretty conflicting reports about that incident, but didn’t that mostly involve remembering to lock doors and telling SHIELD that they’re jerks?”

“It still counts. SHIELD can be really scary.” Darcy glanced at the GPS. “Why are we going east? Shouldn’t we be heading southwest?”

“We are heading southwest.”

“Then why does it say we’re going east?”

“Because Jan didn’t let me kill everybody, so there’s a chance they’re still gunning for us, so if they try to track us with this, they’ll go the wrong way,” Lucy explained patiently. “Could you please keep your finger off the trigger?”

“Sorry.” Darcy quickly adjusted her grip. “And I’m also still sorry about your boobs.”

“I appreciate that, Darcy. I really do.”

“Just, uh, one question?”

“Yeah?” Lucy finished the cigarette and flicked it out the window.

“If you’re like, bullet-proof, should that unsecured crate top even have been able to hurt you?” She chewed her lip and tapped her finger against the trigger-guard. “Even if it did whack you right in the chest?”

“There’s not an enchantment on the planet that can keep broken underwire out of your ribs, Lewis.”

“If I was a magician, the first thing I’d do would be to make it so I don’t need a bra. They’d just like, stay where I wanted them to all the time. No bra needed.”

“Not as easy to manage as you’d think,” Lucy sighed. “It’s like the guy magicians who get all excited about never having an inappropriately-timed boner again. Doesn’t work. At all. Trust me, you’re not the first one to have that idea. There was this Soviet superscientist back in the ‘70s who came up with a kind of localized anti-gravity field that was supposed to make bras obsolete.”

“What happened?”

“It was a complete bust.”

Darcy stared at her.

“You really just said that.”

“Couldn’t resist.”

“I cannot _believe_ you really just said that.”

Lucy snickered.

“You know I have a rifle, right?”

She laughed harder, her shoulders shaking slightly.

“I’m texting Agent Coulson and telling him you said that.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t do that. I need it to be a surprise when I lay it on Pym.” She chuckled, then sighed. “For real, though, it turned out to be weird and awkward and almost as uncomfortable as just wearing a bra. So she outfitted all of her lab assistants and subjects with opera-style metal bullet-bras and developed a new combat technique that focused on just smacking dudes right in the face with the cups.”

“The ‘70s were weird.”

“They really were. But kind of hot, in a really weird way. You know what you could do, though? Text Coulson and get an ETA on our back-up.”

“Isn’t that Jan’s job?”

“Yeah, but they’re laying some bullshit radio-silence thing on her. If you text him and say you’ve been left behind at like a gas station in the middle of nowhere and what are you supposed to do now, I bet he’ll write you back real quick.”

“You want me to lie to Agent Coulson?”

“No, no, nothing like that. Just a little strategic misleading.”

“Because I’m totally okay with lying to Agent Coulson,” Darcy told her.

“Okay, then yeah, I want you to lie to Agent Coulson.”

“He’s gonna know, though.”

Lucy shrugged. “I’m sure, but he’s still gonna write you back.”

“And be mad at me.”

“Tell him I told you to.”

“Then he’ll be mad at both of us.”

“You’re like, twelve. He’s statutorily obligated to be 90% mad at me in this situation,” Lucy snorted. “And I saved his life, so he’s bound by his agently honor not to be too mad at me about it.”

“I am not!”

“What?”

“Twelve!”

“Okay, thirteen.”

“You are the _worst_.”

“Name one horrible thing I’ve actually done to or in front of you. _One_.”

“You turned a killer robot that shot fire out of its face loose on us.”

“That wasn’t me!”

“Not what your brother says.”

“He’s not my brother! Jesus Christ, why are people around here so fucking weird all the time?” She rolled her eyes. “I mean, it’s SHIELD. I’m pretty sure they have a copy of my family photo album and interviews on file with all of my grade school teachers. There is no way this is even still on the table as a real possibility. But everyone’s just ignoring that.”

“Because he’s totally your brother.”

“Just text Coulson, would you?” she growled.

“It’s not my fault reality and the truth are in conflict,” Darcy said testily, tapping away at her phone. “Watch this be when AIM comes in shooting.”

“I’m not that worried about them,” Lucy sighed. “We left them pretty well in the dust when we smashed their centipede, and I may have left a few surprises behind before we rolled out.”

“Like what?”

“Like never you mind.” Lucy checked the mirrors again. “You hit send yet?”

“Don’t rush me. I need to get the emoticons just right or he’s going to know it’s a set-up.”

She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “I still can’t believe you’re the most qualified to be riding shotgun out of this whole damn group. I think we drew every turkey still in their probationary period or who just barely squeaked past their qualifying tests for fieldwork.”

“Yeah, well,” Darcy snapped. “I still can’t believe some goon took the time out of being shot up by SHIELD to tweet a picture of you in board shorts.”

“Ehn. There’s a reason you’re the most qualified to ride shotgun out of this whole outfit and HYDRA _still_ hasn’t been able to take over the world. There’s like a dozen people on either side who really know what they’re doing and give a shit about The Mission, and everybody else is just screwing around and cashing their checks.”

Darcy covered a snort with a sudden fake coughing fit.

“Hey, no. It’s not like I’m a true believer over here. If van Dyne took a break from flying point to poke her head in here and tell me my check ain’t getting cut, I would pull this rig over and fuck off to Maui to sleep on the beach.”

“Oh my god, you are such a liar. You totally wouldn’t.”

“Would, too.”

“Would not.”

“I’m getting more and more certain that I absolutely would the longer I have this conversation with you,” she grunted.

“You totally like us,” Darcy teased.

“I like you exactly as much as I’m getting paid to like you.”

“You’re not getting paid to like us, you’re getting paid to keep us safe,” she pointed out.

“And I don’t like you. See how that works?”

“Pfft.”

A green blur shot across the highway in front of them, and Darcy gaped.

“Was that Dr. Banner?” she asked.

“Pretty sure that was Dr. Banner’s big ugly other half,” Lucy said blandly.

“Shouldn’t we, uh, stop?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?” Darcy craned her neck to try and catch sight of him.

“Yup. I’m being paid to keep you safe, remember? That’s pretty much defined as ‘as far away from whatever’s going on over there as possible’ if the Hulk is involved.”

“Okay, point.”

Lucy flicked the comm on with a sigh. “Wasp, you peeling off to check that out?”

“Negative, stay the course.”

“Awesome,” she said flatly, clicking it off. “You get anything back from Coulson yet?”

“Nope. Oh, wait. Here we go. Uh, hmm. He says if we text him again he’s telling Thor that you pulled the truck over and went to Maui.”

“How the fuck did he even know I--”

“It seemed more plausible than just me getting left behind at a gas station, okay? I told him we were stranded because you pulled over and went to Maui.”

“Why would you do that?” Lucy groaned. “He’s like constitutionally incapable of being worried about a gaggle of SHIELD agents, two Avengers, and a pair of mad scientists. He’d be more worried about the gas station than the group. The whole point of saying _you_ were out there alone was to get a reasonable response.”

“I think I resent that,” Darcy snapped, crossing her arms.

“And I think I’d like you to pick the rifle back up.”

Darcy rolled her eyes but retrieved it. “Wait, you mean like he’s restricted by the Constitution from caring if it was everybody?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. It’s right there in a clause in the Thirty-Ninth Amendment.”

“That’s really weirdly specific.”

Lucy shook her head. “Everybody was a lot drunker back in the day. Especially the politicians. I mean, back during the beginning of the Cold War, they almost passed the Resolution Concerning Senator McCarthy’s Balls. The only reason they didn’t was because Eisenhower got so hopped up on goofballs that he tried to invade Africa again, and all the senators who tackled him missed the vote.”

“So they were passing secret amendments in the ‘50s about Coulson.”

“He’s far older than he appears,” she informed her.

“You do remember I’m a political science major, right?” Darcy asked.

“Of the two of us, who’s allegedly gone joyriding in a time machine? And who’s allegedly broken into Washington’s mom’s tomb? And who’s gotten a look at the schematics for Robot Lincoln?”

“Shouldn’t that be ‘allegedly gotten a look at the schematics for Robot Lincoln’?” Darcy asked.

“Well, so far as I know, there’s nothing illegal about that one,” Lucy said.

“And joyriding in a time machine is?”

“Wasn’t my time machine,” she reminded her. “Though it _is_ really hard to prosecute theft like that, because the clerk tends to frown on you just writing an infinity symbol in the blank for the time and date of the commission of the crime.”

“Huh,” Darcy said thoughtfully.

“Yeah. If you’re going to get busted doing something like that, do your level best to get busted in a way that makes it almost impossible to successfully prosecute.” She reached for the coffee thermos. “There’s actually an entire book of strategies Mistress Manners published a few years back. It’s mostly reprints of her old columns, but it’s easier than rooting through the back issues.”

“Supervillains are weird,” Darcy sighed.

“Superheroes are weirder,” Lucy countered.

*****

Jan adjusted her angle and gained altitude, keeping one eye on the truck behind her and one eye on Banner. He hadn’t slowed, looked back, or given any other indication that he’d seen them.

“What the hell is the rest of the team _doing_?” she muttered to herself.

She’d submitted a brief report on the incident and their relocation strategy, and the only thing they’d gotten back was a message from Coulson instructing them to go dark. If things got much worse, they were going to wind up sleeping on Jones’s living room floor and using empty rum bottles for pillows, she thought sourly.

An incoming message notification popped up on her HUD, and she touched her earpiece.

“Text from Agent Coulson,” JARVIS’s voice read. “Text body: Tell Jones to stay on point if she wants to get paid.”

She sighed and tapped the comm. “Jones, what are you doing now?”

“Driving a truck full of underqualified SHIELD agents and overqualified but still somehow unexpectedly destructive scientists around the great American wilderness.”

“Then why am I getting messages from Coulson telling you to knock it off?”

“Because Lewis fucked up.”

“Hey!” Darcy protested.

“Stop pestering Agent Coulson and keep your eyes on the road,” she said firmly.

“Has Stark messaged you moaning about us not taking a sample of AIM’s latest foray into the world of robotics?” she asked.

“No, why?” Jan sighed. Tony in all likelihood wasn’t _going_ to message them, either, because she’d bet her yearly bonus and a romantic weekend getaway that Hank had sneaked a sample into a containment case, sent Tony a picture of it, and then loaded it into the truck when she’d been distracted.

“Just seems like the sort of thing he’d do if he weren’t dead, in the hospital, or on fire,” Lucy said. “How hung out to dry do you figure we are, here?”

“SHIELD is a global organization built up over decades, and the Avengers is a strike force capable of handling almost anything the world can throw at us,” she growled. “We’re fine.”

“Isn’t that what people say when we’re royally screwed?” Darcy asked.

“Yup,” Lucy answered.

“Knock it off, you two. We are _fine_.” She banked left to avoid a circling vulture. “Do a check on the containment cases in the trailer, just to be on the safe side, would you?”

“All of them, or just the one full of contraband that Pym tossed in with the sensors and flux detectors that I threw back in the pile of discards when he wasn’t looking?”

“You really did that?” Jan demanded, brightening.

“Yes, I really did that.”

“You’re...turning out to be a way better fit with this crew than I expected.”

“Because I put a stop to Dr. Boyfriend’s shenanigans?”

“Primarily, yes.”

“See? I told you superheroes were weird,” Lucy said, her voice slightly muffled.

“I think that’s just them?” Darcy offered.

“I can hear you both.” Jan’s eyes narrowed. “There’s something up ahead. Stay sharp and reduce speed. I’m going to check it out. I’ll report back in ninety seconds.”

“Acknowledged.”

She sped up and quickly left the trailer behind her. A closer inspection revealed the disturbance to be a swarm of Mormon crickets. She adjusted her goggles and fell back.

“Jones, is it possible we’ve been hexed?”

“Why are you asking me that?” came the cautious response.

“Because there are locusts swarming all over the freeway.”

“Anything’s possible, I guess. You want to get out of there? I’ll push them to a safe distance.”

“How?” Jan asked suspiciously.

“I have my methods. But seriously, you’re not going to want to be hanging out when I do this.”

“No tornadoes.”

“Spoilsport.”

She poured as much speed into it as she could and dipped to alight on the passenger side of the cab.

“Rifle, Darcy,” she warned.

“Sorry, sorry.” Darcy shoved the gun at Lucy and scooted over.

“Rifle, Lewis,” Lucy hissed, shoving the barrel out of her face.

“Not sorry, it would just bounce off you.”

“I still don’t want to smell like cordite,” she grumbled. “You secure, Wasp?”

“Yes, why--”

A sudden roar cut her off.

“I thought I said no tornadoes!”

“It’s not a tornado, it’s a gale. Huge difference,” Lucy chirped, grinning at her.

“Why are there locusts swarming here, at this time of year?”

“Global warming? I really don’t know. It’s not magic, though.” Lucy lit another cigarette. “Unless you mean some smarmy bullshit like ‘the magic of mother nature bringing life to a barren world,’ which I explicitly do not.”

“I hate this mission,” Jan muttered.

“That’s because you let them talk you into going salary. I fucking _love_ this mission. I mean, if you can call it a mission. ‘Keep the scientists from exploding’ isn’t much of an objective.”

“Shut up, it’s the best objective.” Darcy went to slap her in the shoulder and missed.

Lucy sucked in a sharp breath. “ _Ow._ You really, really, _really_ need to stop whacking me in the tit, Lewis.”

“Will you two stop bickering?”

“This isn’t bickering! This is assault!” Lucy protested.

“Darcy, stop hitting Jones in the chest. Jones, this is exactly why I wanted you to wear regulation body armor.”

“What, is this just a thing she does to everybody?”

Jan rubbed her temples and stilled when the HUD lit up. “Quiet, both of you.”

She accepted the incoming call.

“Jan? Everything going okay out there? We heard about the attack,” Tony asked. He nudged Clint back and tried unsuccessfully to get Thor to stop crowding him. “You two do realize that getting five inches closer to the speaker doesn’t mean you can hear better, right?”

“We’re being driven around in a semi truck by someone we were so sure would fail her psych eval that we never bothered giving her one, so we could be doing better.” 

“Psych evals are bullshit,” Lucy said conversationally.

“And I want to have a talk with whoever’s in charge of preventative maintenance on our cargo fleet, because have they ever screwed the pooch on this one.”

“But everyone is safe?” Thor prompted.

“Your sister--”

“Not his sister.”

“--might be getting ready to strangle Darcy, Darcy might be a latent supervillain--”

“I totally am not!”

“--and I’m a little concerned about Hank’s opinion about giant ants. We’ve got two techs with mild concussions thanks to an unsecured crate top, AIM is deploying equipment I’ve never seen before, and we crossed paths with the Hulk five minutes ago. Oh, and we’re going to need a mop-up crew loaded for insects the size of Saint Bernards. But yes, aside from that, everyone’s safe.”

“That is a great relief, friend Jan.” She could almost hear the smile in Thor’s voice. She sighed.

“They just said something incredibly dense, didn’t they?” Lucy asked. She nodded.

“We need back-up, guys. Not necessarily right this second, but we’re short-handed and out-gunned if AIM shows back up, and I’d really rather not sic Jones on everybody if HYDRA might show up next.”

“Bad news on the HYDRA front,” Tony said. “It’s the original Red Skull. They hit the SHIELD installations on the western seaboard pretty hard. They’re playing catch-up, and we’re putting out a lot of fires from opportunistic attacks. AIM’s not the only group trying for scraps now that the big dogs are fighting. If you _can_ make it to the next base on your own, we need you to try.”

“So we just drive all the way to Area 53,” Jan said flatly. “No extra cover.”

“I’m really sorry about this, Jan, but there’s not much alternative.”

“We could just drive to Mexico and set up shop like the A-Team,” Lucy suggested.

“Weren’t the A-Team good guys?” Darcy asked, her brows furrowing.

Lucy shrugged. “They weren’t _that_ good.”

“Will you two shut up?” Jan snapped. “No, Tony, not you. The peanut gallery.”

“Try to keep everybody in one piece, Jan. And could you tell Jones to stop making it rain peanut butter in Wyoming?”

Jan glared at her. “Are you making it rain peanut butter in Wyoming?”

“I’m not _not_ making it rain peanut butter in Wyoming,” she mumbled.

“Knock it off.”

“Hey, all that entropy had to go somewhere. It was either that or a triple-chocolate fudge eruption from Old Faithful, and Coulson gets incredibly wage-garnishing when you mess up national parks.”

“Shit. Jan, we’ve got to go. Somebody’s hitting Fort Knox. Coulson will check in with you when we’re done.” 

Jan closed her eyes. “Honestly, Tony, we may be AWOL by then.”

“Pretty please? With a cherry on top?” Clint asked.

“Oh, fuck everything,” Lucy snapped. “Here comes Banner again.”

“Is he...fighting with the locusts?” Darcy asked, leaning across Jan to get a better look.

“Jones, Darcy--I would like you to listen very, very carefully,” Jan said, turning her comm off.

“Yeah?” Lucy said.

“Because this is a direct order.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We didn’t see this, and we were never here.”

“Didn’t see what?” Lucy asked, her face a mask of fake innocence.

“Were never where?” Darcy echoed, looking at the GPS.

“Thank you.” Jan relaxed slightly. “Now, if you could just floor it and get us the hell out of here, that would be great.”

Lucy chuckled, her eyes glittering. “All _right_.”


	63. Chapter 63

Lucy held her head in her hands and groaned. “This is a complete and utter clusterfuck. This is just unbefuckinglievable.”

Jan paced along the shoulder, gravel crunching under her boots.

“It could be worse,” she said after a moment.

“How could it be worse? Oxbow Incident just got fucking _robbed_.”

“What?” Hank asked, glancing down at her. He let his head fall back against the side of the trailer. “You’re watching a horse race.”

“It’s more entertaining than you guys,” she explained. “And we’ve already established that I don’t know shit about repairing engines.”

“How exactly do you get robbed in a horse race?” Darcy asked, squinting at the phone over her shoulder. “Like, don’t the horses just run and one of them crosses the finish line first?”

Jane leaned over them. “Pretty sure jockeys aren’t allowed to just whack each other in the faces with the crops, for one thing.”

“Are you all just pretending not to care about this to make me feel better?” Bruce asked from the front of the truck.

“No, Banner, we honestly no longer care that you smashed the shit out of our only transportation,” Lucy called back.

“At least the locusts are gone?” Hank offered.

“No thanks to you,” Darcy muttered darkly.

“Locusts aren’t--”

“I deal with--”

Jan and Hank looked at each other and grimaced.

“Sorry, Jan.”

“No, go ahead.” She shrugged and kicked a rock.

“It’s not just any bug,” Hank sighed. “Ants, bees, wasps--hymenoptera, really. Locusts aren’t part of that evolutionary line.”

“I’m actually starting to get a little impressed by the fact that none of you care about this anymore,” Bruce said.

Jan pushed her hair out of her face and shook her head.

“I think we were about done three hours before you got here,” Jane said. “Murphy’s Law.”

“Is there any way whatsoever you can fix it?” Jan asked, waving at the mangled engine.

“I really don’t think so, no.” Bruce wiped his hands on what was left of his pants. “I’m really sorry, Jan.”

“Then just stop fiddling with it, okay?” She took a deep breath. “And don’t be sorry. We shouldn’t even have been out here. Everybody back in the bus. Jones, get us where we’re going.”

“Oh, fine, sure. Let’s dump this all on me. Just because I’m a magician.”

Jan glowered at her.

“Yeah, okay, I admit, that came off pretty douchey.” Lucy sighed and got to her feet. “Sorry.”

“You don’t sound sorry,” Bruce said.

“And you sound like you’ve got room to talk,” she retorted. “Hands up, anybody who’s got a fucking problem riding around in something that’s just rolling along because magic.”

A few of the junior agents traded glances before one tentatively raised her hand. Lucy nodded.

“Okay, Selvig? You’re in charge of making sure she gets half a xanax on a responsible, no-fun-allowed schedule.” She brought her hands together sharply.

“I am?”

“Yes. No bogarting the pills. SHIELD can get you a refill when they pry their heads out of their asses. van Dyne, are you taking point again or are we just smashing through anything that gets in our way?”

“Smashing,” Jan bit out. “With extreme prejudice.”

“Awesome,” Darcy squeaked.

“No, not awesome,” Bruce sighed.

“I’m going to vote for awesome, too,” Jane said. “I’ve never gotten field readings on offensive magic.”

“And you don’t want to, trust me.”

“You’re just cranky because weird science caused this problem and magic is getting us out of it,” Lucy chirped.

“Technically, an incredibly lax maintenance schedule and an unhealthy disrespect for second-tier infrastructure caused this problem,” Hank pointed out.

“Everybody back in the trailer, _now_ ,” Jan hissed. Erik jumped guiltily, and Darcy went to climb into the cab.

“Nope. You’re in the trailer. Anybody that tries anything is just getting self-defensed to death,” Lucy said firmly, shooing her back towards Jane. She glanced at Jan.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just making sure you didn’t have any, you know, objections you wanted to express.”

“I am so far past having objections to AIM getting fried that I can’t even remember what having them was like,” Jan gritted.

Everyone trundled past them toward the back of the trailer.

“Good to know, good to know.”

“I’m taking a small amount of comfort in the fact that we’re not currently being shot at.”

“Okay?”

“And you know what else I’m taking comfort in?”

“Not much?” Lucy hazarded.

“ _Not much_.”

“I see.” She coughed. “Uh, Pym? I think you’re in charge of distributing hugs on an as-needed basis. Like, preferably on a schedule that means I won’t get zapped for turning in my timesheet late.”

Hank flushed. “We’re still on assignment.”

“Jones, if I wanted you interfering in my love life, I would have let you know.”

“I’d hug you myself, but I’m going to be driving. And also it would be unspeakably awkward. And I’d probably bleed on you, because that fucking underwire got me but good.”

Jan nodded slowly. “I’m just going to chalk this entire conversation up to sleep deprivation and stress.”

“Probably for the best,” Lucy agreed.

“And you are not ever going to offer to hug me again.”

“Understood.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Hank took Jan by the shoulders and gently steered her toward the trailer. He pointed from his eyes to his with two fingers, and Lucy frowned.

“The hell was that?” she asked Bruce.

“I think Hank was trying to indicate that he’ll be keeping an eye on you,” he sighed. “And I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jan that frazzled before.”

“She’s got her reasons. I’ve been on jobs that got actively sabotaged that didn’t get half as fucked up as this. I mean, it’s one thing if somebody shows up, blows the shit out of everything, and you’re stuck limping to a fallback location in what’s available. You can accept having to drive a crane halfway across Georgia because that’s the only thing still operational after three strafing runs and an unplanned demolition charge. Your getaway vehicle starting out as the crane is a different kettle of fish.”

“I seem to remember you not seeming that upset about that incident. Unless ‘Sherman was a half-assed no-account’ was a cry of rage and despair?”

“Life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.”

“And take a wrecking ball to several rest stops and the world’s tallest house of cards?”

“That roadside attraction knows what it did,” Lucy grumbled. “Give me a boost?”

“You can float.”

“Glass is hard to fix.”

Bruce sighed and laced his fingers together, then braced himself and boosted her up the side of the cab. She crawled onto what was left of the hood and pressed her hands flat against the windshield. The spiderweb cracks smoothed out and the divots popped out.

“I assume there’s a good reason you were bounding across the scrubland instead of backing up the rest of your bros?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you, uh, do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Oh, thank god.” She turned around and frowned at the crumpled metal of the hood.

Bruce sighed. “Why did you even offer?”

“The agents are traumatized, the scientists are unhelpful, and Wasp is about ready to murder somebody. Don’t need you hulking out again on top of everything,” she grunted, prying at the metal. It popped back into shape and slammed down over the wrecked engine.

He crossed his arms and leaned back against the cab. “How are you even planning on doing this?”

“Anti-gravity and steady acceleration. If anything goes wrong, I can stop paying attention without killing everybody.” She clambered down, hissing when the broken skin over her ribs pulled apart.

“Do I even want to ask how that happened?”

“Not really.”

“Or why you’re not fixing it?”

“This is post-fixing. It was pretty deep before. Now it’s just annoying and in a bad spot.” She shrugged. “And that’s why we always tie down cargo.”

Bruce chafed his arms and looked away, his shoulders hunching. Lucy sighed.

“You wanna ride up front with me?” she asked after a moment.

“I think I’d prefer that to riding in the back with the agents I just terrified, yes.” He glanced at the trailer. “It’s been a while since I’ve really lost it like that.

“Shit happens. Get in.” She lit a cigarette. “You heard the news about Skull-dude being the original?”

“Seriously? We’re getting pushed to the wall by a World War II relic?” Bruce rubbed his face. “That’s just...great. Completely great.”

“Captain Tightbuns might take exception to that characterization.”

“Steve spent that time on ice, though. I can’t imagine HYDRA’s had Red Skull in a cryo pod this entire time and only now decided to thaw him out,” Bruce said.

Lucy climbed into the driver’s seat and jerked her thumb at the other side.

“How’d SHIELD get him to agree to getting frozen? That seems like a hell of a sacrifice to make for the country. Or did he get shoved into a walk-in freezer because he thought Korea was bullshit?” she asked, snorting.

“I probably shouldn’t have said anything, actually. Forget it. You don’t have clearance,” he muttered, buckling his seatbelt.

“I don’t have clearance for anything. You can’t just start telling me something juicy and then back out. It’s not fair.” She snapped her fingers and made a quick gesture, and the truck started moving.

“I’m a little surprised you bothered making it look presentable,” he told her.

“Pfft. Much as I might enjoy alarming every cop between her and El Paso, I _am_ on the job, and that job _does_ involve some people Thor’s kind of attached to, and I really don’t fancy getting a hammer thrown at my face. Or whatever Sif would come up with. I think she’s a little more attached to Lewis than to Foster, so there’s no acceptable-loss scenario.”

“Does Selvig not count?” Bruce asked, closing his eyes and falling into his breathing exercises.

“Well, _I_ like Selvig, so not for this calculation? This already freaking you out, Banner?”

“The lack of engine noise is a little alarming, yeah.”

“Pretend it’s electric,” she advised. “You know, I’ve been thinking…”

“Great,” he mumbled.

“Zip it. I’ve been thinking, half the problem here is that there’s HYDRA, and then there’s like, everybody getting in on it while the getting’s good, right?”

“You do realize I pretty much don’t remember the last day and a half?”

“Okay, long story short: Everybody with an even vaguely villainous agenda is now all focused on SHIELD. They smell the blood in the water, and it’s turned into a fucking feeding frenzy. You with me?”

“So far.”

“So I’ve been thinking about that, right? And think what you really want to do here is, instead of trying to fight fucking _everybody_ , you want to just get in there and jam a monkey wrench into the gears.” She gestured emphatically, and the truck skidded slightly.

“Could you maybe watch the road?” he asked tightly, his eyes flashing green. “And, just out of curiosity, how much coffee have you had in the last 24 hours?”

“A fucking lot of it.” She dropped her hands. “I mean, just like epic amounts of coffee. And all of it was _terrible_ , so my feelings about it are kind of ambivalent. I mean, sure, I’m awake, but at what price. Where was I?”

“You think SHIELD should magically sabotage everyone at once.”

She glared at him. “There’s nothing magic about it. No magic needed. None. You just get in there and fuck shit up like whoa.”

“That’s the best action plan I’ve ever heard,” he said laconically. Lucy rolled her eyes.

“It is. It totally is. Fury should get some people on that. They don’t even have to be _good_.” She chewed on the filter and drummed her hands on the wheel. “See, they’re all busy, too. They’re busy, and distracted, and they’re scrambling to get everything they can before this gets settled one way or another, right? They don’t have time to check on who’s actually doing what, or where that intel is coming from, or why somebody’s not reporting back in. You don’t have to work that hard to start jamming them up and getting them to turn on each other. I bet it’s already happening on its own, no intervention required. Just, like, two groups hit the same target at once. Bam. Fight fucking started.”

“That is...actually sensible.”

“See?” She grinned at him. “Think you can text it to Coulson for me?”

“Can’t you do that yourself?” he asked, brows furrowing.

“Nah. He blocked my number a couple of hours ago. Apparently it’s ‘a distraction’ to keep texting him pictures of rocks.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “The degree to which you don’t take this seriously is unbelievable.”

She shrugged, and he dug out his phone.

“And I cannot believe I’m about to listen to you about something.”

“I can’t believe Stark finally came up with a cell you can’t lose no matter how big, green, and angry you get.”

“Yeah, well. Apparently the fact that the design is Hulk-proof is already moving units to the military, extreme-environment operators, and remote exploration outfits.” He took a deep breath. “And NASA.”

“Does that mean we’re going back to the moon?” Her eyes widened. “Oh! Are we weaponizing NASA? Are we finally getting our star wars?”

“Could you at least try to sound less thrilled by the prospect of that?”

“Nope. C’mon. Text Coulson. I need to be told how brilliant I am for having thought of this.”

“You know, if you need positive reinforcement--”

“I need to be told how brilliant I am for having thought of this by someone other than a weird alien who thinks he’s my brother,” she specified.

“Never mind, then.” He tapped at the flexible surface of the phone, his lips pursed. “Done. Now I guess we just wait for someone to get back to us.”

“Pfft. How long could it possibly take to read a text, realize it’s the answer to half of their problems, and thank me for having come up with it?” she demanded. “I mean, have you gotten a text back yet?”

“You know, I’m suddenly feeling very tired. I think I’m going to try to take a nap.”

“Leave the phone on the dashboard, then,” Lucy snapped. “And at least have the decency not to fake-snore at me.”

Bruce smiled slightly and propped the phone in the cupholder before settling in against the side of the cabin.

“Don’t kill us all while I’m asleep.”

“Oh, shut up.”


	64. Chapter 64

Jane snapped a SIM card in place and tossed the phone onto the growing pile in the center of the table. The SHIELD base had been deserted, cold, and empty when they’d arrived. She still wasn’t entirely sure they shouldn’t have kept running.

“They’re really down for the count, aren’t they?” she asked. Hank glanced over at the cot Jan was sleeping on. Behind her, Lucy was sprawled over two folding chairs, snoring softly.

“Jones might just be faking it,” he said, shrugging. “It’s hard to tell with her.”

“But Jan would definitely murder us if we woke her up right now.”

“Yes. Very much so.” He coughed. “Let’s not do that.” He glanced at Bruce. “Still no word from Coulson?”

“No word from anyone,” Bruce grunted, rubbing his eyes. “And the techs haven’t been able to raise anyone on the secure channels.”

“Is that normal?” Erik asked.

“No, that’s kind of the textbook definition of worrisome, actually,” Hank muttered. Bruce nodded.

“Protocol during incidents of broad-spectrum attacks from diffuse sources is to protect communications,” he said. “It’s the only way to coordinate and push back. This is bad.”

“Is it the sort of bad where we’re like the Alamo, or is it the sort of bad where we’re like the last outpost still standing after an alien attack like that bad SyFy movie we watched on the way here?” Darcy asked, tapping away at her laptop. “Because Jones said we’ve got enough here to just like run away to Rio and set up our own operation if we--”

“ _Hopefully_ it’s just the sort of bad where nobody’s call can go through because the network is overloaded,” Hank said quickly. “Let’s not start making drastic contingency plans, okay?”

“Dibs on being Mr. T,” Darcy told him. 

“What?” Bruce asked, staring at her.

“You’re all my witnesses. I called dibs.”

“Darcy, if this goes that bad we’re probably just going back to Harvard,” Jane reminded her.

“Harvard might not be your best bet, Jane,” Bruce warned.

“Why? Ever since the physics department installed that deathray, it’s been one of the safest public facilities in the country,” she protested.

Hank blinked. “Deathray?”

“It was in the alumni newsletter.”

“Wait, you didn’t graduate from Harvard.” Bruce pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Did you?”

Erik’s eyes widened, and he quickly waved his hand across his throat while mouthing “no” at Bruce.

Jane scowled. “No, I didn’t, but my best friend from high school did, and we had a running bet about whose alma mater would perfect the technology _and_ the practical application of it first, and guess who lost?”

“...not her?”

“ _Not her_ ,” Jane said firmly, slapping another card into a phone and tossing it onto the pile. “You know why really burns me about the whole thing? My school should have beat Harvard by five years. They’ve had plans for six years, and they bought the property for the installation six months after the plans got approved. It just keeps getting line-itemed out of the budget because nobody can follow proper lab-safety procedures, and they have to keep renovating the chemistry department. You know what I lost in that bet?”

“No?”

“Custody of our joint science fair medal from sophomore year,” Jane continued grimly, her eyes flashing. “She sends me pictures of it every couple of months. You want to see one?”

“Um…” Hank edged away from her. Erik shook his head frantically, then stopped when he caught Jane’s eye and cleared his throat.

“Let me show you. Wait, where’s _my_ phone?” she muttered, touching her pockets. She frowned at the mound of decoys.

“Hang on,” Darcy said, pulling out her own phone. She tapped the screen, then a muffled “Thunderstruck” ringtone began playing from the bottom of the pile.

“Thanks,” Jane sighed. She retrieved her phone and swiped through a handful of screens before holding it up. “This is what I get at least once a quarter, all because the inorganic chem people don’t know how to work fire extinguishers.”

A large teddy bear with glasses and a medal around its neck was posed on a lectern.

“Is that from the last AAS conference?” Bruce asked, squinting at the logo.

“Yes.” She swiped through to the next picture.

“Is that Neil deGrasse Tyson?”

“ _Yes_.”

“Is what Neil deGrasse Tyson?” Lucy mumbled from the other side of the room.

“Guy in a picture,” Darcy supplied. “Go back to sleep. No, wait, don’t go back to sleep. We’re almost done.”

“Five more minutes,” Lucy grumbled, rolling over.

“Careful, you’re about to--”

She fell off the edge of the chairs and landed on the floor with a thud.

“--fall.”

“I hate you guys.”

“Tried to warn you,” Darcy said cheerfully.

“Why did she have to send you a picture? Weren’t you at the conference?” Hank asked. “Jones, could you please keep it down and not wake Jan?”

“Fuck you, Pym,” Lucy grunted into the carpet. She grabbed one of the chairs and tried to haul herself back up, only to have it tip over and land on her. “Fuck you, chair.”

“Well, I was supposed to actually be giving a presentation at the conference,” Jane told him, “but then _somebody_ swooped in and _stole all my data_.”

“Oh.” Hank flushed. “Yikes.”

“Yeah,” Jane agreed venomously. “Yikes.”

Lucy pushed the chair off and got to her feet. She glowered around blearily. “Is SHIELD done dicking around yet?”

“We can’t get anybody,” Bruce informed her.

“And we didn’t get authorization for anything,” Hank added.

“But we’re pretty much ready to go,” Darcy finished, grinning.

“Well, hooray for us.” Lucy rubbed her eyes. “Wait, ready to go with what?”

“I believe you called it ‘Operation Clusterfuck’ right before you passed out,” Jane reminded her. “Basically prank-calling everybody, getting SHIELD some breathing room?”

“Shit, really?” she asked. “How much coffee did I have before I came up with that one?”

Hank sighed and put his hands over his face. “We’ve been working for four hours straight on something that’s not going to work, haven’t we?”

“No, it’ll work,” Lucy said, shaking her head. She located the coffeemaker and commandeered the pot. “It’s just that I probably shouldn’t have gone around _explaining_ it all to you.”

“You seemed pretty thrilled with yourself,” Jane said.

“You even kind of clapped your hands and said ‘I am so smart!’ a few times,” Darcy added.

Lucy glared at them. “I didn’t.”

“You did,” Bruce confirmed. “It was right before you passed out, in fact.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I took a video of it,” Darcy offered.

“I hate you all.” Lucy drained half the pot.

“There are mugs,” Hank pointed out. She flipped him off.

“Not a morning person,” he muttered to himself.

Lucy blinked at Jane’s phone a few times. “Is that Neil deGrasse Tyson sharing a podium with a teddy bear?”

“Ugh, yes, I don’t want to talk about it.” Jane stuffed her phone back in her pocket. “So, how are we doing this? I everybody taking an organization, or are we trading off, or what?”

“I can’t believe I told you guys about this,” Lucy muttered.

“You seemed pretty pleased with yourself over it,” Darcy said.

“Stop looking for that video before I melt your phone,” she retorted.

“Aw, come on. It’s adorable.”

“It was actually kind of terrifying,” Hank said.

“The hell with you both, seriously.”

“Will it work or not?” Bruce asked.

“It’ll totally work. It’s just so far outside the purview of ‘don’t let anything happen to these scientists’ that I should upcharge the hell out of it.”

“No billing outside the contract,” Jan mumbled from the cot.

“Are you even awake?” Lucy asked.

“No.” She rolled over and pulled the pillow over her head.

Lucy rubbed her eyes again. “Do we have anything to eat? Like an entire box of frozen waffles?”

“No,” Hank sighed.

“Fuck. Hang on a second.” She cracked her fingers and started to frown.

“Okay, the last time you tried to summon something, we wound up with a cab full of frogs,” Bruce said quickly, holding up his hands.

“Not my fault. I was all fucked up on caffeine and sleep deprivation.” She snapped her fingers, and a box of waffles landed on the table. “Who wants to be AIM?”

“I’m calling Serpent Society,” Hank said quickly. Bruce and Darcy tilted their heads. “They know what they did.”

“Be that as it may, I think they’re all in jail right now,” Lucy told him, passing three phones to Jane.

“Well, time to rise from the ashes, then,” he shot back.

“That is so not their motto.” She shook her head and tossed him four phones. “I’m taking Latveria. Banner, you want HYDRA?”

“Why do you get Latveria?” Darcy pouted.

“Because fuck Doom, that’s why. Lewis, you’re the Gates Foundation. Selvig, how’s you’re Icelandic?”

“Nonexistent.”

“Great, you’re Iceland. Just text everybody and remind them that they’re not getting their money back.”

“How come I have to be the Gates Foundation but Bruce gets to pick whether or not he wants to be HYDRA?”

“Because Banner can turn into the Hulk.” Lucy tore open the waffles and toasted one with a gesture. “I’ll take Zodiac, too. Who wants to be De Beers?”

“The diamond company?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Jesus Christ,” Hank muttered, grabbing the phones. “This isn’t going to work.”

“This is totally going to work,” she said around a mouthful of waffle. “Somebody get the rest of the agents in here. We still need an EU, a RIAA, an Oscorp--”

“Oscorp isn’t--”

“The fuck it isn’t, Hank. Also, a Brotherhood of Mutants, and a militant wing of the UU.”

“This totally isn’t going to work,” Bruce said.

“I’m telling you both, this is going to work. You know what started that feud between Doom and AIM a few years back? AIM jumped up their production schedule and swiped some of the superficial styling on his robots and came out with a line of killbots that looked better than his two weeks before his were ready. That is literally it. That’s what they spent all that time shooting at each other over. Individual supervillains are driven, ambitious, and focused. Supervillainous _institutions_ are petty, backstabbing, short-sighted conglomerations of failure kept on their feet by the enormous slush-funds they’ve amassed and the inability of their weakest members to ever find work anywhere else. Darcy, stop giving me that look. These are my waffles, and I’m not sharing.”

“What look?” Darcy asked innocently.

“The puppy-dog look,” Jane sighed. “You might as well just cave now. She’s not going to stop, and nobody’s been able to resist it so far.”

“Coulson did?” Lucy said sceptically.

“I was too busy yelling at Coulson for jacking my ipod to try the look,” Darcy confessed.

Lucy rolled her eyes. “Oh my god, _fine_. You can have some waffles. But I’m not toasting them for you.”

*****

Darcy and Jane crunched happily on their waffles while Lucy glowered at one of the phones in her lap.

“You know, I think conjuring a toaster counts as caving,” Bruce commented. 

“Does not.”

He frowned at a message. “Hank, are you just telling everybody that Spider-Man’s stealing their stuff?”

“No!” He flushed.

“Are you telling some people that the Fantastic Four are stealing their stuff and some people the Spider-Man is stealing their stuff?” Lucy asked.

“Maybe,” he muttered.

“You know he’s like twelve, right?” Darcy asked, looking up.

“Wait, is he? Why hasn’t CPS been called?” Hank demanded, horrified.

“What’s CPS gonna do? It’s not like they can catch him,” Lucy muttered. “Never mind. Bullseye’s on the case!”

“Jones, are you antagonizing a vindictive assassin?”

“No, mother, I’m _further_ antagonizing a vindictive assassin.” Lucy glanced over at the cot. “Wait, are you properly up? Here, take over for your boyfriend before he gets Spider-Man killed.”

“I’m not--”

“Hank, why are you trying to get Spider-Man killed? You know he’s only seventeen, right?” Jan rubbed the back of her neck. “Why does it smell like cinnamon and maple syrup in here?”

“Jones made breakfast,” Erik told her.

“I didn’t. You know, if he’s seventeen, he might be emancipated. I mean, you’re dressing up like a spider and beating up muggers, you probably don’t have a lot of parental influence in your life.”

“That how you got started?” Bruce asked.

“Ha ha, go fuck yourself, Banner.” She tapped one of the phones on the table in front of her.

“Oh, no. Guys, Latveria’s got the bomb,” Jane said.

“Nope, sorry, that’s me,” Lucy said quickly. “I was trying to send that to somebody else.”

Hank frowned. “Latveria’s _had_ the bomb. For years. And so does...Jane, you’re AIM, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, but I was trying to send AIM an offer from Latveria to sell the bomb to Syria.”

Jan stared at them blearily. “Did she turn you all evil while I was asleep?”

“We’re spreading disinformation,” Bruce explained.

“And Christmas cheer,” Darcy added.

“I think you missed the point of this exercise.” Lucy took another bite of waffle.

“To Magneto.”

“Or not.”

“Did Coulson sign off on this?” Jan asked.

“So far as we know, Coulson and everybody else at SHIELD HQ has been banished to the Negative Zone,” Hank told her.

“So we’re just doing the insane thing that Jones suggested because we’re desperate.”

“And super-bored,” Darcy said.

“And we’ve got axes to grind.” Lucy shot a meaningful glance at Hank.

“Dammit, Hank, are you sabotaging the Serpent Society?”

“It’s not technically sabotage if it keeps them from contacting any of their old associates once they’re out on parole, right?”

“I’m going back to sleep,” Jan muttered.

“No, no. Don’t do that. Here.” Lucy shoved a pair of phones at her. “Take over Zodiac for me. I’m in the middle of offering the Assassin’s Guild a ridiculously low rate for a contract on that Zemo asshole. Which, Pym, is how you’re supposed to be doing this. Get the douchebags being douchebags at other douchebags.”

“Richards _did_ loot a SHIELD depot a few days ago?”

“Then call him up and yell at him,” Jan sighed. She looked at one of the phones Lucy had tossed at her. “On a phone not currently spoofing...Vladimir Putin. You’re going to get us all KGBed to death.”

“Meh.” She shrugged. “Gotta go out somehow.”

“How did you even _get_ this? And don’t say--”

“ _Magic_!” Lucy said grandly.

“--magic,” Jan finished. “Please tell me these things aren’t broadcasting our location.”

“Of course not. That’d give it away immediately. Or rather, they _are_ broadcasting, but it resolves to appropriate, credible locations.” 

“Nobody sic anybody on people we’ve had potlucks with,” she said, scowling at Lucy. “Or teenagers.”

“Why do I feel like that was directed at me? How was that even a little bit my fault? I’m not…” Lucy stopped and looked around. “Did anybody else hear that?”

“Hear what?” Darcy asked. “The sizzle from the sick burn the Gates Foundation just laid on AIM’s robots?”

“No, it sounded more like that Möbius strip centipede’s spiky little feet. Only not as loud.”

Hank shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and Jan adjusted her gauntlets.

“The Möbius strip centipede that you left behind?”

“Yeah, the Möbius strip centipede that I left behind.”

“I may have...loaded it up and brought it with us,” Hank confessed.

“I know. Jones tossed it out. Or at least _said_ she tossed it out.” She fixed Lucy with a glare.

“The fuck? I totally fucking did.”

“I may have loaded it up and brought it with us anyway.”

“You sneaked it onto the transport twice?” Jan asked.

“Oh, god damn it,” Lucy snapped. “Why in the name of everything holy and un- would you _do_ that?”

He crossed his arms. “Science.”


	65. Chapter 65

Jan poked at her ice cream and scowled. “This is frankly insane. We all know that, right? None of us are under any impression that this is normal?”

“I thought you said Coulson took you out for ice cream all the time,” Lucy said around a mouthful of strawberries and whipped cream. Jane and Darcy shot her a look. The junior agents did their best to look like they were ignoring her while they subtly scooted their chairs away.

“He does,” Hank said quickly, biting off a piece of waffle cone.

“Then what’s the problem? I mean, sure, we got our asses kicked by something the size of a suitcase, and sure, Foster’s dodecahedron transmogrifier got stolen, but Latveria’s bicentennial is off, AIM’s fighting with Sea Org, HYDRA just got twenty percent of its bases looted by disaffiliated groups, and this peanut butter fudge ripple is excellent.”

“If I try explaining that that’s not even close to the name of the equipment that got stolen, do you think you might get it right in the future?” Jan asked.

“Nope.” She sucked the tip off her ice cream cone. “Look, I know this isn’t exactly the stellar, A+ outcome you usually come home with, but we did some really excellent work. Enjoy your ice cream.”

Jan glanced at Bruce, who shrugged and dug a spoon into his rocky road. “Where did you even get that much cash from? You haven’t been out of my sight since Boise.”

“Hill.”

“You stole Hill’s wallet? We’re eating ice cream on Hill’s dime?” Jan hissed, her eyes widening.

“What? No, I did not steal Hill’s wallet.” She paused, a thoughtful look crossing her face. “Though I bet there would probably be something in there with her personal phone number--”

“That’s just creepy,” Darcy muttered.

Lucy rolled her eyes. “Says the chick who tazes dudes and then loads them into vans. She hired me to help on the helicarrier. Paid cash. SHIELD in general could take a fucking memo, you know.”

“Hill paid you for helping out of petty cash?”

Lucy shrugged. “I think it was her own pocket, actually, but I didn’t really stop to check.”

“Hill paid you for helping out of her own pocket?”

Lucy buffed her nails on her shirt. “I provide innovative solutions in an evolving marketplace.”

“You shoot people in the face and yell about magic,” Jan retorted.

“Like I said, innovative solutions in an evolving marketplace.”

“Good God, we’re going to get fired.”

“No, we’re not, and your ice cream is melting,” Hank sighed, patting her on the back comfortingly.

“Well, we really might actually get fired over this,” Bruce said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “I don’t think we’ve ever gone further out of protocol than this.”

“No way. Stark set Samoa on fire once. Barton shut down power to the eastern half of Belarus during what was supposed to be a covert operation. You’ve done some really nuts stuff as the Hulk while technically still on a mission. And that’s just what I can think of off the top of my head,” Lucy said. “Oh, and that time Pym ‘accidentally’ infested Lincoln’s log cabin with termites.”

“That was genuinely an accident!” Hank protested.

“Johnson and Outerbridge are still playing war games,” Bruce pointed out.

“Hey, you two! Knock it off!” Jan snapped. The two agents started, flushed, and hid the cell phones. When she slumped down in her chair and groaned, they discreetly went back to tapping out furious messages and forwarding sensitive documents.

“They’re going to have to open a whole new department to keep track of this,” Hank muttered when they shared a surreptitious fistbump.

“If Fury doesn’t have at least two departments already on this, I’ll buy you guys another round,” Lucy said. “I mean, this is like, _basic_ espionage.”

“Starting an off-the-books World War III is basic espionage?” Bruce asked.

“We didn’t!” Jane said, swallowing a mouthful of mint chocolate chip. “It wasn’t even close to a world war. It was more like when Pluto got reclassified as a non-planet. Only with slightly more gunfire and maybe a few more fatalities.”

“A few?” Jan asked.

“I don’t think you understand how seriously certain people take Pluto’s planetary status and how unprepared the general academic community was for that,” Jane told her firmly, her hand curling into a fist.

“Easy, tiger,” Darcy snorted. “Sprinkles?”

“On mint chocolate chip? Gross.”

“How is that gross?”

“Can we not get into another fight about ice cream condiments?” Hank asked.

“Maybe if I get a satisfactory explanation for how sprinkles on mint chocolate chip could possibly be construed as gross,” Darcy said, raising her eyebrows.

“You guys pick really weird things to squabble about, you know that?” Lucy sighed.

“Whose fault it is that we got beat up by a tiny destructo-bot that shouldn’t even have been on the truck is not a weird thing to squabble about,” Jan snapped. “It’s not even a squabble. It’s an actual fight.”

“I was talking about the sprinkles? And, I guess, to a lesser extent the hot fudge. I mean, you three do realize that the point of hot fudge is to get the ice cream sort of melty and give a temperature differential in addition to the taste blend, right?” Lucy looked at three of the junior agents. They scooted their chairs around until they were facing away from her. “Real mature.”

“We’re not starting this conversation back up,” Jan said.

“But--”

“So help me, I will write you up for insubordination.” She finally pushed her cup away. “And beyond that, you do realize that we _still_ haven’t gotten a call from HQ, right?”

“They’re too busy marveling over the brilliance of our independent operation to congratulate us properly?” Lucy offered.

“We could still go A-Team if things turn sour, right?” Darcy asked.

“Yes,” Lucy said.

“No.” Jan threw a balled-up napkin at her. “Well, maybe if things go really, really sour.”

“Jan!”

“I’m not above exploring my options, Hank.”

Lucy snickered and took another bite of her cone.

“Wait, was there some sort of subtext to that?” Hank demanded, frowning. “Why was that funny?”

“No. Please ignore her, Hank, she’s awful.”

“I’m not awful. See?” She gestured to her ice cream cone. “It’s not even melting on me, and it’s a scientific fact that ice cream melts and gets all over your hands if you’re awful.”

“Jane?” Jan grunted.

“That’s not even close to a scientific fact,” Jane told her.

“Then how do you explain--”

“You’re clearly doing some sort of magic that accounts for the lack of melting, the weird trident-prongs of whipped cream that gravity doesn’t seem to affect, and whatever’s going on with the orbiting ring of crushed walnuts,” Jane said. “And I’m pretty sure none of that’s got anything to do with any moral qualities on your part.”

“It _could_ ,” she muttered.

“Well, I’m not a magician, so I could be wrong, but I’ve seen no evidence of it so far.”

“I’ve seen no evidence of _you_ so far.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense,” Jane protested.

“Doesn’t it, Foster? Doesn’t it?”

“No.”

“It could be a koan?” Darcy offered.

“Don’t encourage her,” Erik said quietly.

“I still don’t see how Coulson could afford this on a regular basis,” Lucy said after a minute. “A regular team’s what, about a dozen people?”

“Give or take.” Hank swiped Jan’s abandoned cup.

“That’s like a minimum of three bucks a pop, even in the cheaper states. Plus extras like waffle cones and extra scoops and whipped cream and low-sugar flavors and gelato and lactose-free milk and all, and you’re looking at something like fifty bucks per.”

“So?”

“So, I’ve seen agents’ payscales. Between rent, suits, and transportation, that’s a sizeable dent in the budget. I’m not sure how he’s swinging it.”

“Maybe Coulson doesn’t actually ever take anyone out for ice cream, no matter how well the mission went, and you just got conned out of a hundred bucks,” Bruce suggested.

“Pfft. Nonsense. I’m a magician. I’d totally be able to tell if I’d been had.” She flashed him a bright, sly smile, and he rolled his eyes. “Or maybe I just didn’t feel like fucking quibbling over ice cream, because ice cream is delicious, and we _did_ just pull off a huge win that pays back half the people I’ve ever been mad at and then some.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You keep that up, you can buy the next round,” Lucy snorted. She looked at Jan. “We seriously can’t get anybody on the line?”

“Not yet. I’d think they’d have prioritized communications systems after this stunt bought them some breathing room, but either they didn’t, or they got hit hard and fast and they’re still trying to repair the damage.” She frowned at her tablet and shook her head. “I’m not even picking anything up from Tony’s back-up networks, which is really alarming.”

“Do you think it might just be us?” Darcy asked, swiping Erik’s cherry.

“Darcy! I was saving that for last!”

“Too slow,” Darcy countered.

“Like what, we’re somehow just cut off from SHIELD, but SHIELD’s otherwise completely fine?” Jan asked.

“Yeah.”

They glanced at Lucy, who shrugged. “I’m not picking up shit in terms of interference. And honestly, that would make zero sense. We’re not important, we’re not carrying anything vital, and nobody’s looking for us specifically. Why the hell anybody would cut us off instead of cutting everybody off, I don’t know. I suppose I could field some theories, but they all involve Shriners and Tibetan mole-men and are unlikely to be correct.”

“You could pop off and find Thor and figure out what’s going on?” Jane offered.

“I could, yes, but then I’m pretty sure everybody would be crabbing at me for abandoning my post. I’m here to protect the three of you, remember?”

“‘Other duties as assigned’ would cover this, I think.”

“Not to any of the Asgardians, it wouldn’t, and I’m sick of getting yelled at by douchey aliens.”

“Thor is not douchey,” Jane snapped. “And neither are any of the rest of them. They are _charming_.”

“Whatever. It’s a moot point, because I’m not running off and leaving you idiots with a pile of bad luck and no protection just to check on the status of SHIELD’s internet access and data-plan.”

“Could you at least tell where he is?” Jan asked, chewing her lip.

“Greater Minneapolis area,” Lucy answered automatically.

“What, really?”

“Yes, really? Why are you surprised by that? Is he like forbidden from going to Minnesota or something?”

“I just didn’t know you could be that accurate with his location.” She tapped away at a news app.

“Yup.”

“That’s a little alarming.”

Hank stared at her. “All the unbelievably irresponsible things she’s done that we know of, and _that’s_ alarming?”

“Thank you, Pym.”

“It’s creepy in the same way realizing that Fury’s got an archive of all our personal emails tucked away in a thumb drive implanted somewhere in his skull is creepy,” she explained.

“Oh, Jesus,” Hank said, his lips twisting in consternation.

“It is not _nearly_ that creepy,” Lucy said. “And if that really bugs you, you can always start emailing each other things that are like their own punishment for whoever goes combing through them.”

“Like what?”

“Random dick-pics, middle-schoolers’ angsty poetry, extreme close-ups of bugs fucking, I don’t know. You’re adults, I shouldn’t have to give away that many trade secrets to get you going.”

“Being a supervillain involves some weird stuff,” Darcy said, gnawing absently on the cherry stem.

“Not really. I mean, it’s not that different from leaving bogus data-sets on unsecured terminals to trip up your professional rivals in neighboring labs.”

Erik coughed. “We’ve, uh, we’ve never done anything like that.”

Jan sighed and rubbed her temples. “Seriously, you guys?”

“They shouldn’t have tried to snipe our grant,” Jane said firmly.

“If you really think about it, it was a valuable life-lesson,” Darcy added.

“Right,” Jane agreed. “If you do your own work, you know if was done right. And if you try to steal other people’s work, fuck you.”

“Or we may have done it, but we certainly had a very good reason,” Erik amended.

Lucy spread her hands. “See?”

“This is not the first time you’ve done something like this, is it?” Jan muttered, sitting back and crossing her arms.

“It’s been alleged that I may have done similar things in the past, but I resent any implication or insinuation that I’m anything other than a law-abiding citizen,” Lucy said primly. “Wait a minute. Lewis, didn’t you give Sif a personal phone?”

“Yeah?”

“Can’t somebody just call that? I mean, whoever doing whatever shouldn’t have stomped Verizon into the bargain, right?”

“It’s Sprint, actually--”

“Darcy, the question is effectively unchanged,” Jan told her. “Do you still have the number?”

“Of course I still have the number. I got her the phone so that I could call her and we could talk.”

“Then could you please try to call her and see what the hell is going on?” Jan asked. She frowned and looked out the window. “Is that what I think it is?”

Lucy tipped back in her chair and craned her neck, trying to get a glimpse along Jan’s line of sight. “I don’t see how you could possibly mistake that for anything else. I mean, you’re feeling okay, right? You can see things and everything?”

“It’s back. Why is it back?” Hank demanded. Lucy glared at him. “Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t do anything this time.”

“It looks almost like it’s lost,” Jane said, her brows furrowing. “Can those things get lost? I’d think AIM would have equipped it with a GPS or something.”

“Fuck it, I don’t care what it’s doing.” Lucy rolled up her sleeves. “Figure out what we’re doing, Wasp. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

“Where are you going?” Jan asked, tilting her head.

“Take revenge for that thing hitting me with a fire extinguisher.”

“That is really not a priority right now.”

“Okay, then I’m gonna go get back Foster’s doohickey.”

Jan looked out the window, then shook her head. “Fine. Knock yourself out. Have fun.”

“All right, all right,” Lucy muttered happily. “High-five?”

“I’m not high-fiving you. Just go kill it. Without your customary amount of property damage.”


	66. Chapter 66

Fury stared at the reports, his mouth settling into a thin, hard line and his eye glinting. “This is for real. We _still_ can’t raise anyone off the western seaboard.”

“Yes,” Hill answered flatly, her own expression no warmer. “We’re still working on exactly _how_ it happened.”

“We can figure that out after we’re back online.” He cast a dark look in Tony’s direction. “And then we can thank our lucky stars that everyone on the planet who’s gunning for us decided to lose their damn minds at the same time.”

“Almost there,” Tony said, rubbing his eyes. “This would be easier if your spectacular tech failure hadn’t dragged my systems along for the ride, you know. This is why I didn’t want to let you guys tether in the first place.”

“Your country apologizes for the inconvenience,” Fury growled.

“Is my presence still required?” Thor asked, his brows furrowed. “I must admit that I still have not mastered the intricacies of Midgardian technology to the point of being able to offer assistance in this task.”

“Yeah, but if you take off now, we can’t get in touch with you when HYDRA starts blowing things up again,” Clint pointed out.

Thor held up a phone. “The Lady Sif has graciously allowed me to borrow the cell that Mistress Darcy presented her as a gift.”

“Is that a sword on the back of it?” Tony asked.

“Yes! It drips red, with the blood of slain enemies.” Thor turned it so that Tony had a better view.

“Darcy bedazzled a phone celebrating homicide and then gave it to Sif. Does that mean they’re murder-friends now?”

“There is no shame in a death found in battle, provided the cause is honorable,” Thor scolded. “Though they are assuredly fast friends. It seems the Lady Jane and her comrades have been hard-pressed since we lost contact with them. I would like to escort them to safety.”

Fury grunted a few choice obscenities and sighed. “Where are your sister and Wasp in all this?”

“My sister is engaged in single combat with a mechanical beast in their defense, and Lady van Dyne is attempting to secure the services of a shuttle bus.”

“Huh. And here I was convinced that I’d prefer to be anywhere but here,” Tony muttered. “Turns out there are actually worse places right now.”

“Do not be unkind, friend Tony. They are doing their best in a difficult situation. Darcy informs me that they have misdirected and tricked our enemies at Lucy’s suggestion, and that we should soon have some respite.”

Fury took a deep breath. “Say that again.”

“We should soon have some respite?” Thor asked.

“The part about them misdirecting everyone.”

“Not everyone, Director! Only our enemies.”

“Jones just destabilized our entire roster of usual suspects for kicks.”

“I’m sure her motives were far nobler than that,” Thor protested.

“For pay?” Clint asked.

“To aid our cause,” he sighed. “Though presumably her own past grievances with our foes were not forgotten during her actions against them.”

“In which case remind me to thank her for her forbearance during the fact,” Fury said dryly.

“But of course.” Thor beamed at him.

Fury snorted. “Go find your girlfriend and get everybody to a base. And keep that phone handy, in case we need to deploy you.”

Thor nodded and made his way to the helicopter pad on the roof, Mjolnir swinging from his belt.

“Why can’t any of the magicians we find ever be sane?” Fury muttered.

“Magic’s inherently irrational and--”

“That was rhetorical, Stark. Can we at least get eyes on the Hulk if we can’t raise anyone east of the Mississippi? It would be nice to at least know he’s not trying to fight the Grand Canyon while we’re chasing our tails and dusting off our telegraph equipment.”

“If it makes you feel any better, Jones _has_ got an unbelievable knack for getting right under pretty much anybody’s skin within seconds of meeting them?” Clint offered.

“In the context of her weaponizing that knack, Barton, it really doesn’t,” Fury said. “Stark, I need an ETA on the communications reboot.”

“Another half hour, at least. You know, if you’d just let me load a back-up copy of JARVIS…”

“I’m not spending the rest of my career getting sassed by your electronic babysitter.”

“Well, don’t come crying to me when your communications system isn’t reminding you that you’ve got a secret Congressional stonewalling session in time to get your lies straight,” Tony muttered, turning back to his monitor.

Fury rolled his eye and sighed.

*****

Jan crossed her arms and watched the tiny robot batter itself determinedly against Lucy’s forcefield.

“Where’s the rest of it, again?” she asked.

“Fuck if I know. The same place the rest of the original robot is? I genuinely do not know what the fuck is up with this thing. I mean, I just don’t. Usually things either self-repair or they stay all fucked up and busted.” Lucy waved Jane’s equipment at it, and it redoubled its efforts.

“Could you at least stop teasing it?” Hank asked.

“You think it’s got some doomsday device it hasn’t whipped out yet?” she snorted.

“No, it’s just, um, poor sportsmanship. Don’t you think?”

Lucy stared at him. “First off, it hit me with a telephone pole before I turned it into a shrinky-dink. Any expectations of good behavior it has concerning me can go straight to hell. Second, I am a supervillain. Kicking people when they’re down goes with the territory. Same with bombastic victory speeches and evil cackling.”

“And fashion faux pas...es?” Darcy frowned, then looked at Jan. “What’s the plural of faux pas?”

“Fuck off, on both counts,” Lucy snapped. “Maybe Pym can tell you why it’s making a habit of dragging a tenth of its mass out of the huge jingly pile of what it used to be. I don’t know.”

“Well, if I’d gotten it back to the lab and been able to study it at length, maybe I could.” He glowered at the lunchbox-sized machine.

“You know, the inevitable defeat would probably be a lot less embarrassing if there was a little less grandstanding beforehand,” Jan pointed out. 

“The only thing that makes defeat inevitable is assuming it’s inevitable and planning accordingly,” Lucy retorted. “And honestly, if I can’t grandstand every now and again, I might as well just go work for a debt collection agency or something. What’s the point of being the best at something if there are people out there who don’t know how great you are?”

“I know, right?” Darcy asked, looking pointedly at Jane.

“What? _I_ never said self-promotion wasn’t an integral part of any independent scientist’s career,” Jane said, spreading her hands. “Sitting back and waiting for everyone else to realize how right you are about something is how you wind up old and bitter and teaching at community college and hoping your TA doesn’t burn all your notes out of spite after you keel over in the middle of a class.”

“That is not going to happen,” Erik said testily.

“Well, it’s not _not_ going to happen without a good Twitter account and some networking,” she retorted. “Hank?”

“Well, I, uh…” He coughed and looked at his feet for a second. “I’ve actually found you really can’t go wrong with dressing up like a superhero and using your theories to fight evil?”

“Unless you’re on a budget, in which case Twitter is a lot cheaper and almost as effective,” Jan cut in.

“Or you don’t like getting shot at,” Erik huffed.

“You don’t like getting shot at, why the hell did you hook up with a goddamned war-god?” Lucy asked.

“Since when are you a war-god?” he asked, cocking his head.

“I was talking about Thor,” she grunted. “I’m not any kind of god.”

“Thor isn’t a war-god,” Jane said. “He’s the god of thunder.”

“I’m pretty sure everybody from that dimension is a war-god.”

“Is not.”

“Jones, can you get rid of that thing before the bus shows up? Because if they roll in and see that, I am reasonably sure they’re not going to stop,” Jan sighed.

“Reasonably sure they’re not going to stop anyway,” Lucy said with a shrug. “We’ve got incoming.”

“Oh for God’s sake, what _now_?” Hank groaned.

“Thor. I guess if you talk about him, he shows up to settle the argument? Is that a thing now? Because if that’s a thing now, we should probably develop a code-word.”

“Develop a code-word?” Darcy’s eyes narrowed. “Does that mean you’re sticking around?”

“What? No. Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. I’m collecting my paycheck and then I’m gone like the wind.” Lucy scowled at her. “Sticking around. Pfft.”

“Ha! You totally liiiiiiiike us,” Darcy hooted triumphantly.

“I do not like you. Any of you.”

“You dislike us?” Erik asked. “I didn’t think we were that bad.”

“I didn’t say I _dis_ liked you. I just don’t like you,” she explained quickly. “I’m ambivalent. Totally neutral. Completely and utterly detached.”

“How can you not like us?” Jane asked, her face crumpling.

“I didn’t...that’s not what I...oh god no nononono _no_ don’t start crying. I seriously can’t deal with--” Jane grinned at her suddenly, and Darcy snickered. Lucy puffed out her cheeks. “You guys are the worst. I take back everything I said about not disliking you. You’re awful, and I hate you.”

“Oh, come on. Admit it. You don’t,” Darcy said. “You bought us ice cream and got Jane’s toys back from that robot and kept us from getting blown up.”

“And I would take every last bit of it back if I could,” Lucy sulked.

“I’d start running now, if I were you,” Hank sighed. “This is how I got roped into the Avengers.”

“What are you talking about?” Jan demanded. “We _applied_.”

“No, you applied. I got arm-twisted into it.” He gave Lucy a haunted look. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to disappoint Captain America?”

“Not really? I mean, I’m pretty sure I’ve done it without even being awake for it.”

“Okay, do you have any idea how hard it is for anyone _with a conscience_ to disappoint Captain America?” he amended.

“Oh, you can just fuck right off, Pym.” She pointed at Jane and Darcy. “And so can you guys with your thinking that I like you. Jerks.” She paused. “Though if I do start running now, do I still get paid?”

“No,” Jan said immediately. “And I don’t do that thing we talked about before you signed the contract.”

“Jan!” Hank looked stricken.

“What?” she asked, confusion etched on her face.

Lucy tilted her head. “How could you possibly object to-- _oh_. Well, if I’d known _that_ was on the table…”

“Oh my God, _it wasn’t_. What the fuck is wrong with both of you?” Jan snarled.

“Sleep deprivation and a probable concussion?” Hank said.

“Antisocial tendencies, mercenary nature, and overexposure to Hobbesian philosophy at a young age?” Lucy asked. “Oh, and I’ve developed a weird, maladaptive, Pavlovian response to women who’re likely to stab me. That one’s kind of a professional hazard, though. I mean, you should see what the higher-ups in HYDRA get up to the minute they’ve got a third date with a--”

“Recognizing that it’s maladaptive is the first step to remedying it,” Erik said firmly, cutting her off.

“Second step is admitting that you totally like us and want to come over and hang out and watch cartoons with us,” Darcy added.

“I would have to be so unbelievably high before that was an acceptable way to spend my time,” Lucy snorted.

“So what, we’ll see you as soon as this wraps up?” Jane asked.

“Ha ha, very funny.” She rolled her eyes before muttering, “Maybe.”


	67. Chapter 67

Lucy flopped back in a plastic chair and stared at her phone. Across the parking lot from the ice cream parlor, Jan and a knot of agents clustered around a bus that looked like it had seen better days. Erik leaned over Lucy’s shoulder and cleared his throat.

“What in the name of God?” he asked.

“You ever fuck up your life so bad that you can’t even climb in a time machine and go back and fix it, because you fucked up the time machine, too?” she sighed.

“I can’t say as I have,” he said after a moment.

“Huh. Good for you.” She deleted the picture and shoved the phone in her jacket pocket. “I really can’t recommend it.”

“Was that a human head in a bowling bag?” he persisted.

“It was a head in a bowling bag, yes.” She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. “It wasn’t human, no.”

“And the thing holding the bag…?”

“Was really a big rabbit, yes.”

“Who sent you that?”

“Barton. Coulson. Fury. My accountant. My accountant’s small children. All of the above. Lots of candidates, really.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “Like I said. Life. All fucked up. Christ.” She looked around. “I don’t suppose you happened to see a liquor store on the way in? I’m feeling this really intense urge to not be sober for this. I mean, I basically just need to drink until at least some of the steps leading up to this being my life look like reasonable things to have done, instead of fuck-up blocks slowly but steadily adding up to a fuck-up pyramid.”

“It’s been my experience that drinking tends not to solve the problems that drinking caused in the first place,” Erik offered hesitantly.

“One, a truly, appallingly, _deeply_ embarrassing amount of that was done more or less sober. Two, you suck at enabling. For future reference, the correct answer is ‘The world is against you because nobody understands the sublime genius of your works or appreciates the delicate beauty of your soul.’ followed immediately by directions to the nearest booze emporium.”

“I’ll keep that in mind for the next time we’re all kidnapped.”

Lucy sucked on her teeth. “You know what the worst part of this is?”

“The human-looking head in a bowling bag?”

“Jan was right. I bet she’s going to be like a huge jerk and get all ‘I told you so’ about everything.” She slumped further down in the chair, glowering at the little robot tapping furiously at the forcefield. “Ugh. I hate it when superheroes with terrible costumes are right. It just encourages them. Like next she’ll be wearing horizontal stripes or mixing plaid and polka-dots and asking me if I’m getting gay-married yet.”

“Even if Jan says ‘I told you so,’ I’m still reasonably sure the human-looking head in the bowling bag is the worst part,” Erik said laconically.

“At this rate, that stupid little bot’s brothers aren’t even going to finish robbing Fort Knox before SHIELD gets back online,” she muttered.

“What?”

“Huh?” She glanced at him as if she’d only just registered his presence. “Nothing. You’re right. Human-looking heads instead of bowling balls in ugly plastic cases. Terrible. Worst thing about this whole incident. I should do like a hundred dollars’ worth of fixing it in the next few minutes or something.”

“You said something about Fort Knox.”

“No, I didn’t. You must have misheard me. Probably that concussion.”

“What concussion?” he demanded irritably. “You definitely said--”

“Wow, you don’t remember that concussion? Maybe it was worse than everybody thought. You were out cold for a few minutes. Look, I’m going to go find something to drink. Why don’t you sit here quietly and try not to fall asleep?” she asked brightly, getting to her feet.

“I am definitely not concussed,” Erik sighed. “And you’re a scoundrel.”

“I agree with none of that.” Lucy brushed off her pants. “You know, I really have to admire that bus driver. If I was her, I’d have given up and just let Jan have her way like five minutes ago. That woman’s dedication to nebulous company policy in the face of an unannounced national emergency is a sight to behold.”

“I’d have thought you’d be rather against Pecksniffian rule-worship,” he said after a moment.

“I believe in two things, Selvig: go big, or go home.” She cracked her knuckles and wiggled her fingers. “Abraca _fuckeverything_.”

A bottle of dark brown rum blinked into being and fell into her outstretched hands.

“There are times when I find it difficult to believe you even listen to half of what comes out of your mouth,” Erik muttered.

“Like twenty-five percent. Maybe. On a good day.” Lucy unscrewed the cap and took a swig. “Seriously, though, I’d be just as happy if she got the name of the company wrong, accepted a cash bribe, and had a title that was still registered to a used car lot in Mexico. A day like today, I just want somebody to fucking impress me. I want reassurance that I’m not the only one out here making catastrophically bad life choices.” She looked around. “Is that really so much to ask?”

“I’m standing here next to you in spite of multiple chances to be somewhere else,” Erik pointed out.

“Thank you. I appreciate that.” She offered him the bottle, and he sighed and took a sip.

“How long until Thor gets here?” he asked.

“Like, five minutes. Tops. Jan’s still going to be bickering about what constitutes luggage. You should go tell Jane or something. Maybe he can charm the driver out of measuring every single box the agent brigade are trying to load up.”

“You could try transporting us all yourself,” he said hopefully.

“Yeah, you say that, but the first really bad teleportation clusterfuck I was involved in led _directly_ to the whole head-in-a-case thing. And that only started with extra passengers. And everybody almost being murdered.” She waved her hand vaguely. “You know, small potatoes compared to this shit.”

“If it’s not human, what is it?”

“Alien from beyond space-time, like Thor.” She rocked back on her heels and scanned the skyline. “You guys seriously get kidnapped?”

He shrugged. “You’d be surprised.”

“Apparently.” 

She pursed her lips, bent down, and filled the bottle cap with rum. Erik followed her as she retreated far enough away that the robot could get to the cap. It dipped its claws in the liquor, then kicked the cap over and started pounding on the invisible barrier with renewed vigor. 

“Yeah? Fuck you, too, buddy. See if I try being nice to you again. Little snob.” Lucy stalked a few paces toward the bus, then stopped. “Still, though? I mean, even with Thor hanging around?”

“If anything, it’s gotten worse. He can barely be touched, but his friends? Mortals.”

“Man. You know, I can’t even put a fucking price tag on all the shit he’s smashed while I’ve been standing around, and he’s usually in a reasonably good mood. I mean, by the time he’s packed up and ready to go, everything’s busted to kindling and on fire.”

“Isn’t the fire usually your fault?”

Lucy ignored him. “I can’t even imagine how not in the budget it would be to deliberately piss him off in the name of...uh, why do people usually go kidnapping you? Is it _just_ to piss him off, or what?”

“It’s not like it happens often enough to draw generalizations based on the experience,” Erik said.

“Fuck that. You’re scientists. I bet you’ve got fucking pie charts and statistically whoositsed line graphs and shit.”

“Yes, there are certain visual representations of common denominators, but it’s impossible to control for or do properly randomized trials,” he protested. “And self-reporting is notoriously unreliable.”

“Pfft. Self-reporting is the best kind of reporting. You get credit for your work and you don’t even have to be mad at whoever narced on you to the Avengers. Hell, if you allegedly did something so fantastically clever that nobody even noticed, sometimes it’s the only reporting that’s going to happen.”

Erik frowned at her.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“That’s not the sort of self-reporting you were talking about, was it?”

“Not even remotely.” She proffered the bottle, and he downed two shots’ worth. She went to take it back, and he moved it out of her reach. “No. I’m keeping it.”

“I’m not above just stealing it back.”

“I need it for my Fort Knox concussion.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

“What do you need anything out of Fort Knox for, anyway? Your overhead can’t be that high, and your pay from this assignment should be quite substantial.”

“I’m like ninety-five, ninety-nine percent sure that they’re just going to sign my paycheck right over to some city or other that I’ve allegedly half-destroyed or afflicted with plague rats or dragged a demon scorpion through or got everybody slapped with parking tickets in. Because it’s SHIELD, and that’s the sort of shit they pull. And besides that, I don’t, strictly speaking, need anything out of Fort Knox. It’s the hypothetical, alleged principle of the thing.” She sighed impatiently. “I swear to god, did he stop for coffee somewhere? Where the fuck _is_ he?”

“You’re that eager to see him? I thought you’d been trying to avoid him.”

“I have been, but I hate the suspense,” she said. “Have you guys considered, you know, just like _shooting_ at dudes when they show up to kidnap you? I find it solves a lot of my low-level annoyances. Just being ready to crack a motherfucker in the face with a pipe or something. Enough people drag themselves back to a lair with a broken face and a lot of wasted time, they tend not to bother you unless it’s really important.”

“If we’re particularly busy or in a sensitive stage of an experiment or observation, Darcy usually tases them.”

“Well, I guess that’s something, at least. Maybe SHIELD could assign you a full-time goon-assassin.”

“I’d prefer not to be constantly under the watchful eye of SHIELD, personally,” he said.

“Bit late for that, I think.”

Erik grunted noncommittally, and a gust of wind swept across the town, kicking up dust, grit, and sand.

“There we go.” Lucy spat out a bit of sand. “Just in time to watch our ride drive away because of a minor clause in sub-section C.”

“Jane!” Thor shouted, sweeping her into his arms and spinning her around. “I am glad to find you all well!”

“You’re seriously not giving that bottle back, are you?” Lucy sighed.

Erik shot her a measuring look, then strode across the parking lot. “Thor!”

“Well met, Erik,” he called back, beaming at the scientist.

“Your sister’s been waiting for you,” Erik said loudly, inclining his head in Lucy’s direction.

“Wait, what? Oh, fuck you, Selvig,” she snarled. Her eyes went back to the even brighter smile splitting Thor’s face, and she groaned. “I haven’t! I totally fucking haven’t! He’s a trouble-maker and a liar!”

Thor crossed the lot and clasped her to his chest. “I have missed you as well.”

“And I’m also not your sister,” Lucy mumbled into his chest. “Fuck’s sake. Everything about this mission is going so unbelievably, stupidly wrong. I can’t even remember what we started out doing.”

“Protecting the Lady Jane and her companions,” Thor rumbled, clapping her on the back. “You’ve succeeded admirably.”

“Could you maybe stop smiling quite so much? It’s really annoying,” she snapped, rubbing her ribs. “And no more hugging. No hugging, period. Fuck hugging.”

“You’re in almost as foul a mood as the Wasp,” he murmured, glancing back to where Jan was still in her stand-off with the driver. “They look as if they might come to blows. Whatever is the matter?”

“I think it’s mostly just a clash of personalities. You should go referee.”

“It is good to see you again.”

Lucy gave him a long look. “We’re not having a moment.”

“But of course we are! You’ve allied yourself with us to protect those most precious to me. It is not a thing I will soon forget, or cease being grateful for.”

“Have you ever considered, just like for a second, being a worse person? There are benefits, you know,” she grumbled, walking toward the bus with him.

“Such as not getting tangled up in these sorts of things?” he suggested, laughing.

“Not really, actually. But you make better money off it when you do. And you don’t get as tangled up, for as long. But you’re way less irritating to those around you. Like, I might conceivably like you a little better if you were a worse person.”

“I see little benefit in compromising my honor in order to be less irritating,” he chuckled, “even if you might think more kindly of me. Particularly seeing as I don’t believe you _would_.”

“It’s worth a try, isn’t it?” she grunted.

Darcy ran up and wrapped her arms around him.

“Hey, you. They told me you were back. And then I saw you, because you’re really tall and shiny. Have you guys got communications back up yet? It really sucks not being able to talk to anybody. Or get reinforcements. Or have my speeding tickets deleted.”

“They have not,” Thor told her gravely. “But they should be close. Many fine agents are working on it with every resource at their disposal. I have the utmost confidence in their abilities.” Lucy snorted. “Such pessimism does not become you, sister.”

“It’s called realism. The word is _realism_. And not your sister.” She picked at her jacket. “I bet I could find a spare bulletproof vest and emboss that on there. Maybe you’d remember it.”

Thor’s brow furrowed. “Have Lady van Dyne and Hank Pym been quarreling?”

“Uh, no more than usual? Aren’t they usually bickering about something?” Lucy asked. “Escaped ants and whether ammunition is covered under office supplies and whether or not the administrative assistant can be paid directly out of the grant or has to be paid out of the ‘general overhead’ bracket or why are you all looking at me like that? This is not the first time I’ve worked for action-scientists.”

“I had rather assumed you were completely disinterested in the business side of things,” Erik said, shrugging.

“What, like Lewis?” Lucy snorted.

“Hey, I’m interested in the business side of things. I just usually can’t stay awake through a complicated explanation,” Darcy said defensively. “Because it always turns out to be hella boring.”

“And Jan and Hank usually get along fine,” Jane added. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard them fight before this whole mess.”

“Really? Every time I’ve ever seen them in the field together, this is going on,” Lucy said.

Jane and Erik traded glances.

“Common denominator,” Jane pointed out.

“On what grounds could I conceivably be responsible for the state of whatever the fuck is going on with them?” Lucy demanded.

“You know, we can hear you,” Hank sighed. “You’re all very loud, and we’re not very far away. If you could either stop discussing our love life or at least keep it to a dull roar, that would be nice.”

“You don’t think I’m responsible for you guys fighting, right?” Lucy asked.

“I’ve got money on you saying you do, Hank,” Darcy said.

“Jones, you are exceptionally aggravating, especially in large doses. Darcy, drink less coffee and stop betting on things like that. It’s impolite.”

“How am I exceptionally aggravating?”

“This entire conversation could stand as Exhibit A,” he pointed out.

“Oh, come on.” Lucy glared at him. Her phone buzzed, and she glanced at it. “Oh, hey, wow. You guys good here? With Thor? Because I’ve gotta go deal with this.”

“What now?” Jan snapped, hanging back out of the bus’s stairwell.

“Some weirdo emergency. Coulson’s being accosted by the rabbit that almost smashed us all to bits and pieces when I was resurrecting them. This is kind of bad. And I’m kind of the only one capable of saving them. Which I should do, because I’m secretly really fond of Agent Buzzkill.” She waved her phone at them and then shoved it back in her pocket. “Be good, everybody. Listen to van Dyne. Thor, no zapping anything. This is all incredibly expensive electronic equipment. Catch you guys on the flip side.”

She vanished.

Jan stared at the spot she’d been. “She...what...everybody else saw that photo, right? And she actually said what she said? I’m not dreaming?”

“My sister is indeed traveling to render aid to our companions, who are beleaguered by a rabbit from the underworld,” Thor said gravely. “It is odd, though. I had thought rabbits were those small fluffy creatures who deliver candied eggs to children in the spring, but they would make a most unlikely candidate for ferocious hell-beasts.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but no, you were right about rabbits.” Hank rubbed his face. “More or less. In a metaphorical way.”

Thor sighed. “She’s deserted us to go engage in some plot of her own devising, hasn’t she?”

“God only knows,” Hank told him. “Barton tried to explain what happened with them, and it was nuts enough that it wouldn’t necessarily stand out in that story.”

“Ehn.” Jan shrugged. “One way or another, she’ll be back. She didn’t sign up for direct deposit, so we’ve got her paycheck. Get up here and help me deal with this service contract.”


	68. Chapter 68

Fury took a deep breath and flexed his hands a few times.

“One more time, gentlemen,” he said.

Coulson looked at the bowling bag and then back at Fury.

“A giant, talking rabbit dropped off an alien head in a ‘70s bowling ball transportation container,” he said flatly. “He’s the same giant, talking rabbit that Agent Barton and I met while in the company of Lucy Jones, while we were comatose. He indicated that the head was for Jones, and then he departed by unknown means.”

“These would be the same sort of means he used to gain access to an ultrasecure facility in the first place.”

“Yes, sir.”

Fury opened the bag and looked doubtfully at the head. It glared back at him.

“Ugly son of a bitch, ain’t he?”

“You mortal cur! I’ll have you know that--”

Fury snapped the case shut and looked at them. “It’s still talking.”

“That’s correct, sir,” Phil said carefully.

“Do we know how it’s talking without a set of lungs?”

“Current hypothesis is magic, sir.”

Fury made a face. “Do I need to form a new division to deal with incredibly weird shit and assign you two to it permanently?”

“God, I hope not,” Clint groaned. Fury fixed him with a look. “Sir. God, I hope not, _sir_.”

“Get Thor back here. Get Jones back here. Get this dealt with. See if you can guilt Thor into letting go of some Asgardian tech for getting this dealt with. Do I need to elaborate?”

“No, sir,” Phil said, keeping his tone neutral.

“And keep me posted, Coulson.”

“Yes, sir. You’ll be the first to know as soon as I’ve got a line on Jones.”

“See to it. Dismissed, agents. And take the head with you.”

Phil and Clint saluted briefly before grabbing the case and making for the elevators.

“I’m so not handcuffing this thing to me,” Clint said, as soon as they were alone. “Anybody else wants to take if off me, they can have it.”

*****

Lucy stretched and sighed in contentment. The sun was warm, the breeze was cool, the surf was calm, and the tiki-bar waitstaff was attentive. She adjusted her sarong and drained her glass. She hadn’t felt this relaxed in ages. It was, she thought, the payoff of knowing there was a giant mess and having successfully weaseled out of cleaning it up.

Another rum punch appeared at her elbow, and she thanked the waitress and traded her empty glass for the full one.

“Hey, Lucy, can I get one of those?”

She twisted around in the chair and found herself face-to-nose with Rabbit.

“Fuck off. I’m not talking to you,” she grunted, pushing her sunglasses up.

“What? Why not? What’d I do?” Rabbit climbed onto the adjoined wicker lounge and stretched out, his white belly bright in the sun.

“What did you do? What did you _do_? Fucking hell, Rabbit, what haven’t you done?” she demanded.

“Are you stalling for time while you think of something to be mad at me about?”

“Does your spine even work like that?”

“Touche.” He produced a pair of sunglasses from thin air and propped them up on his face nowhere near his eyes. “There are a few benefits to being a vaguely anthropomorphic incarnation of rabbits as imagined by humans.”

“Yeah, well, you can fuck right off with all of that.” She sipped her drink and glared at him.

“I went out of my way to take your package to your friends, because I couldn’t find you, and this is the thanks I get?” Rabbit huffed, trying to flag down the waitress. The woman either couldn’t see him or was resolutely ignoring the fact that she could, and he kicked a hindpaw irritably. “Come on, order me one?”

“So this was your idea of doing me a favor.”

“Part of being a good tenant is signing for shit when the landlady’s out, yeah?” he asked, his ears flopping over the back of the chaise.

“Come again?”

“You get fucked up packages because your life’s all fucked up and shit, I sign for ‘em,” Rabbit said slowly, drumming his forepaws on the arm rests. “Done and done, right?”

“Go back to the houseguest part,” Lucy gritted.

“What? You said I could crash at your place.”

“ _When_ did I say that, exactly?”

“You remember when Caiman showed up, and you took off with her, and I asked if I could stay with you when I got back topside, and you said ‘Yeah!’? ‘Cuz you sounded _really_ enthusiastic about hosting me, so I didn’t think you’d mind if you weren’t there at the time.”

“Was there any chance you were mistaking terrified screaming for assent, there?”

“Uh, no hablo ingles?”

“Yeah, that don’t fucking work anymore, bunny.”

“Uh, well. Maybe, I might conceivably have mistaken you just yelling for no reason for an actual answer. But I still signed for your stuff and tried to give it to you.”

“The reason I was yelling was the distinct possibility of ultra-death, courtesy of you and that jerkoff stunt you pulled. The fuck did you sign for a talking goddamn head for?”

“I didn’t know it was a head! It was just in like a normal-looking box and all. And then it started yakking, so I opened it up, and bam. Human head. Well, you know. Not _really_ human, but close enough. Anyway, heads are only good for so long, Lucha. I figured I could at least stick it on ice for you. I didn’t know it was gonna be so mouthy about it.”

“Jesus Christ, Rabbit.”

“What? I’m not the one getting heads FedExed to me.” Rabbit wrinkled his nose at her. 

“I don’t get heads FedExed to me. FedEx doesn’t take human body parts.”

“Shipped by somebody, then.” He shrugged. “And what’s the big deal about me crashing at your pad, anyway? We’ve known each other forever.”

“You run up the utility bills, dig up the garden, and throw loud parties.”

“Oh, and you don’t?”

“I don’t get shirty with the neighbors when they noise-complaint me.”

“Yes, you do.” Rabbit stole her glass.

“Hey! Rabbits don’t drink.” 

“This one does.”

Lucy glared at him, then gave up and waved to the waitress. The woman raised her eyebrows but brought her another drink. “Besides that, I’m pretty sure I don’t actually have a pad to crash at.”

Rabbit flicked his ears. “Looked fine when I dropped by. Fully-stocked fridge and everything.”

“You sure it was my house?” Lucy demanded. “The only thing my fridge usually has in it is mixers and liquor.”

“Yeah, like I said, full-stocked. And even if I wasn’t sure, the delivery-chick sure as hell was. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody want to get rid of a package so damned fast in my life.”

“The guys you left it with probably wanted to get rid of it more. I’d show you some pictures, but I kind of ditched my phone because if I spend another fucking second faking GPS coordinates anytime in the next decade, I’m going to tear my hair out.”

“Dunno about those guys. They sort of looked like they wanted me gone more than they wanted the head gone. I got the distinct impression that some of them have existential and-or professional crises coming up in the near future.” Rabbit looked suspiciously close to pleased with himself.

“Guess it wasn’t a total loss, then.” Lucy stirred her drink. “You know what I don’t get? How the fuck Mimir even got himself to a shipping facility. Like what, did he roll there and then ask somebody politely to pack him up? And how the fuck did he get my address, anyway?”

“Might’ve asked politely,” Rabbit snickered. “The return address was in Canada.”

“Wait, what?” Lucy stared at him over her sunglasses. “Canada. _Canada_ shipped me a zombie-god’s head.”

“Might have been a frame-job, I guess?” he said. “I mean, they used maple leaves instead of packing peanuts. I don’t get up there enough to know if that’s something they’d really do, or if it’s just like some cartoonish mockery of what they’d do.”

“I don’t think you get to ding anybody for being a cartoonish stereotype, Rabbit.” She settled back in her chair. “Ugh. The secret president’s going to pay for this.”

“That mean your little sulk-vacation’s over?” Rabbit asked hopefully. “Because I’m kind of here to ask a favor.”

“I’m not on a sulk-vacation. I’m on a vacation-vacation. And no, I’m not going anywhere. I already had something in the works. I mean, I’d really prefer it if it was a stand-alone smiting, but it could just as easily be read as a retaliatory smiting, so I’ll come up with something else later.” She twisted her hair into a knot and draped it over the back of her chair. She’d gotten sick of keeping it short surprisingly quickly once she’d gotten more than a half-hour of sleep here and there.

“Yeah? What’d you do?”

“Mailed each and every last Canadian a letter of apology.”

“That’s a smiting?”

“Their postal system is so beyond fucked they’re going to have to send birthday cards and bill payments by carrier pigeon until July. And I paid for it with gold stolen from Fort Knox without bothering to deactivate any of the tracking devices first, so the Joint Chiefs are probably tripping over each other to revamp and update their favorite land-invasion-of-Canada plans as we speak.”

“That still sounds more like a Tuesday than a legitimate smiting.”

“Shut up and drink your drink, Rabbit.”

“Hmph.” He flicked his ears back. “So about that favor.”

“No. I’m not doing anybody any more fucking favors. I paid back the turtles, I’m not toasting your tail for fucking up my house, I’m not even gonna bill SHIELD for keeping their scientists safe. Everybody else can suck my clit for like the next decade.”

“But I kind of promised Ixquic--”

“No.”

“She’s _really_ pretty,” he wheedled. “And _really_ impressed by how you ruined all her dad’s plans.”

“A, that is cheap, Rabbit. Extremely cheap. B, she’s _really_ married.”

“It’s only kind of cheap, and she’s only kind of married. Pleeeeeease? I can’t pull this off by myself.”

“Not my problem.”

“Come on, man, be cool.”

“Stop whining, Rabbit.” She scowled. “It’s giving me flashbacks to _Watership Down_.”

Rabbit drained his glass and made a series of annoying slurping noises with his straw until people further down the beach started looking up from their blankets. He stopped abruptly, his ears going up and angling forward.

“Heeeeeey, Lucha?” he asked quietly.

“I’m not getting you another one, and if you steal mine again, I’m going to tie your ears in a bow.”

“What exactly did you do to pay off the turtles?”

“Why do you even--” She stopped, following his line of sight. “Okay, that’s a lot of coatis.”

“And seagulls.”

“And seagulls,” she agreed.

“And they look really angry.”

“Yes, yes they do.”

“And they’re coming right for us.”

“Yeah, I may have fucked up here.” She swallowed. A line of herons appeared behind the coatis.

“May have?” he squeaked.

“I’m going to start running. You should probably head in the opposite direction.”

“That sounds like a really great plan.”

Lucy sprinted down the beach, and Rabbit paused long enough to steal her drink before bounding away toward the hotel.

*****

“Oh, hey, it’s Jones!” Darcy chirped, grabbing the remote. “Look, Jane! Jones is on tv.”

She turned the volume up. A shrill cry of “I didn’t think this throoooooough!” sounded over the speakers until it was drowned out by the newscaster.

Thor grimaced. “As battle-cries go, it could be better.”

“I’ve heard worse,” Fandral snorted. He shot a grin at Volstagg.

“That was a misunderstanding! I thought that Leroy Jenkins was one of your legendary heroes,” he protested. “It’s only appropriate to honor the valiant fallen in times of battle. And you must admit it was effective when the warrior in the red and black used it.”

Jan winced. “Pretty much anything most people associate with Wilson is going to be effective. He has an effect on people.”

“Chaos has erupted in an exclusive Mexican resort-town thanks to a swarm of local wildlife invading the popular beach-front hotel--”

“Is she hitting a raccoon with a broom?” Jane asked, squinting at the screen. “That seems a little unfair.”

“I think that’s a palm frond, and I’m pretty sure the raccoon started it this time,” Darcy said. “Now, dousing the birds with a fire-extinguisher just seems mean. And isn’t interfering with migratory waterfowl illegal?”

“That’s only in the US and Canada. Mexico didn’t sign on,” Jan told her absently. She touched her comm. “Coulson? Check out the news feed on ESPN-8.”

“I’m not even a little bit sorry, you--” The rest of her shouting was cut off in a series of staccato beeps. The announcer’s serious expression became a little fixed.

“What was initially thought to be a staged protest against the decision to host a jetski racing tournament during turtle-hatching season has proven to be something more--”

“Dude, come on, interview me!”

“I’m not interviewing a figment of my imagination!” the announcer hissed before snapping back to face the camera. “We’re receiving unsourced reports of hallucinogens and mass hysteria as--”

“But I’ve got the inside scoop! And I wanna be on the news!”

“Man, I almost hope they preempt penny-farthing jousting for this,” Darcy said, grinning. “This is awesome.”

The camera started to pan down and to the announcer’s right. “Tina. Do not try to film the hallucination, Tina. You’re going to get us fired. This is going to be like the hockey play-offs all over again, Tina.”

A large tawny rabbit standing on his hind legs brightened visibly once he was center-frame.

“Oh boy!” He licked a paw and slicked his ears back. “Do I look okay? Hi, ma!”

The microphone appeared over his head, and he tapped one of his hindpaws on the ground excitedly.

“Oh, right! Okay. So that’s Lucy Jones, and she’s a magician, and she _BEEP_ ed up helping out some turtles, and--what was that?”

A garbled statement that sounded like “You can’t say that on tv” came from behind the camera.

“What, turtles?”

“No, _BEEP_.”

“Well, that’s bull _BEEP_. I watch tv all the time, and everybody says ‘ _BEEP_.’ Wait, _BEEP_ , are we on _broadcast_? Ah, _BEEP_ it, tv’s tv. Anyway, so there we were, just like drinking and talking and colluding and _BEEP_ , and then Lucy’s like ‘Oh, _BEEP_ , I _BEEP_ ed up,’ and then just this _wave_ of like everything that normally eats turtle hatchlings just rolled up like something out of _Braveheart_ or _Road Warrior_ or something, and like _Ride of the Valkyries_ might as well have started playing, and then--”

“Can somebody go make popcorn?” Darcy asked.

“Are you volunteering?” Jane asked, staring at the tv. 

“No? I don’t want to miss any of this.”

“Aren’t you TiVoing it?”

Darcy stomped off, grumbling, and they heard the microwave door slam a few seconds later.

“I feel as though I should go to her aid,” Thor said hesitantly. “But truly, I know not what I would be able to offer. Though I believe the rabbit is fond of fruit that he cannot reach on his own, or perhaps that he can reach on his own but is too lazy to pick.”

“Thor, I appreciate that impulse,” Jan told him, laying a hand on his arm. “But I’m going to have to ask you very, very firmly not to get the Avengers’ name attached to this. People already don’t want to hear about the stuff we couldn’t handle because our entire network got turned into confetti by a Civil War-era android. Obnoxious talking rabbits and your sister are enough to get our funding cut for the foreseeable future.”

Erik wandered in, frowning at a handful of scrawled notes. 

“Does anyone know what an upside-down picnic basket is supposed to be? Whoever took these made no attempt whatsoever to see that they were legible.” He stopped in his tracks and stared at the tv. “Oh, dear. It’s that rabbit again.”

“You know of this beast?” Sif asked.

“Ah, I think he may have texted Ms. Jones right before she left. He was the one in the picture with Agent Coulson and Agent Barton.”

“Is that what that brown blur was? A rabbit?” Jane asked. Thor raised his eyebrows. “What? The way she was waving it around, I thought it was a picture of a raw chicken on a podium.”

“I do not know why she would wave a picture of a raw chicken around,” Thor sighed. “But then, I do not understand how this has come to pass, either, and one seems neither more nor less likely than the other.”

Rabbit was waving his paws around and pointing while babbling about an animal liberation front “by the animals, for the animals,” and the reporter was looking increasingly glassy-eyed.

“And that’s what I think about that!” Rabbit announced brightly. “But I should probably go see how Lucy’s doing, because after this we’re going to go help fight this huge jerk of a macaw. It’s gonna be great.”

“Thank you for updating us, and best of luck on your future endeavors. In related news, this is why we don’t talk to optical illusions, Tina. This is even worse than the giant-duck incident, and we’re going to spend the rest of our careers covering octogenarian Polar Bear Club outings.”

“Your sister’s a walking Cronenberg movie, Thor,” Darcy snorted, passing a bowl around. 

“Coulson’s sending a retrieval team as soon as they dig up enough peck- and bite-proof suits for everybody,” Jan announced. “Not that I think it’s going to do any good, but apparently Fury doesn’t subscribe to any sort of philosophy that recognizes lost causes.”

“Well, she is not answering her phone any longer,” Thor said. “A face-to-face meeting might be the best option.”

“And he wants you back at HQ to help deal with whatever’s going on there. Apparently it’s something that requires an Asgardian touch, or an interpreter, or I don’t even know. I’ve never heard Coulson sound that close to retirement. Jane, think we can pry you out of the lab for a little while?”

“I’m coming, too,” Darcy said around a mouthful of popcorn. A fireball erupted on the beach behind the announcer. “And your guys might want to bring some asbestos, too, Jan.”

“Reporting live from the complete cluster _BEEP_ that this entire day has turned into, I’m Chet Briefly--”

Jan turned the tv off and shook her head. “Best of luck, guys. Let me know when you manage to corral your sister. I need to talk to her about something.


	69. Chapter 69

Lucy rinsed her mouth and spit into the bushes, paused, then did it again.

“Feeling better?” Rabbit asked, his ears pricked forward.

“My tongue is numb and, in spite of that, my mouth still tastes like frog. So no.” She scowled at the wreckage of the tiki bar and the churned sand of the beach. “Fucking amphibians.”

“I still don’t know what possessed you to bite that toad,” he snorted, taking a step back when it looked like she might be sick.

“She bit me first,” she muttered, spitting furiously. “This is just turning into the worst fucking day.”

“I know, right?” Tony asked, ambling down the boardwalk. “It’s the kind of day that just makes you ask what else could possibly go wrong.”

Lucy glared at him, then glanced at Rabbit. “I’m hallucinating, right? There’s not a fucking superhero in fucking jean shorts standing there with a stupid fucking smile on his face, right?”

Rabbit shrugged. “If you’re hallucinating, I’m hallucinating too.”

“How the fuck did you even get here so fast?” Lucy demanded.

“Uh, it’s been like three hours since you made live tv. I could have biked here from Malibu by now.”

“It hasn’t been three hours.”

Tony cocked his head at the rabbit. “Speaking of hallucinations, you know you’ve got something like ten percent of the helicarrier staff benched for mental health reasons?”

“A guy flying around in a suit of armor’s fine, a guy that can turn into a huge green monster’s normal, a guy that can talk to bugs is just SOP, but a guy who’s featured in every culture’s mythology since you all figured out how to talk is cause for everybody to check themselves into the loony bin,” Rabbit huffed. “It’s discrimination, is what it is.”

“And it’s totally been three hours. It’s actually been closer to four hours, if you want to get technical.”

“I don’t want to get technical, I want you to go away.” She straightened up and groaned.

“Holy hell,” Tony laughed, staring at her. “Your eyes are the size of _manhole covers_. What did you _do_?”

“Bit a bufo toad,” Rabbit supplied helpfully.

“You bit a….Why would you do something like that? Don’t those things routinely kill dogs?”

“The toad started it,” Lucy muttered. “And I’m a primate. We do occasionally fall back on biting things during times of intense emotional disturbance, you know.”

“Like when you’re getting bum-rushed by fifty thousand seagulls?”

“And maybe your parents let you watch _The Birds_ when you were a little too young for it, yes.”

“So, not to make this day any worse, but--”

“If you try to arrest me, I’m punting you into the sea.”

“She’ll do it, too,” Rabbit warned.

“That talking head guy your mythologically-challenged buddy here dropped off with SHIELD is telling them all sorts of fun stuff about you,” Tony said, grinning. He leaned against the wooden railing.

“Yeah, I’m sure he is. He’s a huge fucking liar, though, so fuck off.” Lucy patted her sarong. “Rabbit, do me a favor and go get a bottle of rum from the pile of thatch over there?”

“He’s talking to Thor, too.”

“Great.” She spat again. “God, why does poison taste so horrible?”

“Really?” Tony asked, rubbing his face.

“Okay, yes, stupid question.” She waved her hand in front of her for a few seconds. “Jesus fuck, I’m getting trails. I’m swear I’m going to convert their poison glands into fucking peanut butter glands. Every dog in the country will be snacking on them by sundown.”

“And, most of all, I thought you might want to know that Thor’s taken it seriously enough to start talking about taking him back to Asgard.”

“Why are you telling me this? You can’t possibly be under the impression that I give a shit what he does with that goddamned narc of a Valinor.” She squinted at him. “No, wait, that’s not a real place, is it?”

“Were you trying to say Vanaheim?” Tony asked, covering his smile with a cough.

“I think so.” Lucy wriggled her fingers, and Tony scrambled back a few paces. “Oh, chill out, you tin-plated chicken.”

“I’m not in my armor, and even if I was in my armor, I don’t really want to be transmogrified into bacon because you’re high.”

“No, it’s just.” She wriggled her fingers again. “I think I’m missing a few?”

“You’re fine,” Tony said soothingly. “You’re just really high. Which is I guess a little concerning to everyone who’s not immune to magic.”

“Hey, Lucy, is tequila all right?” Rabbit called, his head popping out of a mound of shredded tiki.

“Yes, fuck, whatever doesn’t taste like toad-poison,” she yelled.

“You should come talk Thor down. He’s planning to get you written into the official Asgard line of succession,” Tony said, watching as Rabbit took a few quick swigs from the bottle before bringing it over.

Lucy snatched it as soon as it was offered, and Tony made a face.

“You’re not even going to wipe off the mouth first? It’s got rabbit spit all over it.”

Lucy paused, glanced at Rabbit, then shrugged.

“We’re bros,” Rabbit informed him frostily. “What’s a little saliva between bros?”

Lucy spit out the tequila, made a face, and then wiped her lips. 

“More like I bit a goddamn toad, and I think I’m done being squeamish about anything else for the next twenty-four hours,” she muttered. She drank for a moment, then sighed and stuck her tongue out. “Ugh. Just fucking ugh.”

“Yeah, note to self, never bite a cane toad,” Tony sighed. “Seriously, though, we’re talking about an interdimensional political problem, here.”

“Look, buddy, I’m sure the chatterbox in a box is real important, but the lady’s busy,” Rabbit butted in, kicking a bit of sand up behind him.

“Yup,” Lucy agreed vaguely. “Plans. We’ve got ‘em. Really important plans. We’re going to…” She trailed off and raised her eyebrows at Rabbit. He looked at her quizzically for a moment before catching on.

“We’re gonna go help some people beat up Vucub Caquix. It’s super-important and--”

“Who?” Tony interrupted.

“Wait, _what_?” Lucy hissed.

“Vucub Caquix, he’s--”

“You wanted my help with that fucking psychotic asshole of a parrot-god?” she demanded. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

“So you don’t have plans, then?” Tony prompted.

“Of course we have plans,” Rabbit said firmly, his ears flattening.

“Nope, this is more important. Asgardian throne. Can’t wait. Let’s go.” Lucy stumbled onto the boardwalk. “Move it.”

“Hey!” Rabbit protested.

“What are you waiting for, Stark?” she snapped.

“Do I even want to know?” he asked.

“Depends. You got a problem with teeth. Like exploding and stuff?” She mimed a mushroom cloud forming with her hands.

“Uh…”

“Right. Nope, you don’t want to know. Let’s go convince an Asgardian lawyer that everything’s terrible.”

“Lucy, seriously, this would be so much easier with you on board,” Rabbit whined, darting in front of her.

“You heard the man, Rabbit. My hands are tied. Interdimensional blah blah blah. Very important.”

“Maybe don’t do the ‘blah blah blah’ thing when you’re trying to convince people something’s important?” Tony suggested, looking pained.

“Don’t push it,” she hissed, tossing the half-empty bottle to Rabbit. “Malibu, here we come.”

“We’re not going to Malibu, and you’re facing south.”

She blinked owlishly at him, then looked back at the water, frowning. “I’m...are you sure?”

“Yes. I’ve got a compass and everything.”

“Well, then.” She threw her hands up. “Lead the way to wherever the fuck we’re going.”

“Just promise you’re not going to do any magic while you’re all messed up on frog poison? I mean, I’m good for the dry-cleaning bills, obviously, but I could live without you turning the jet into a whale.”

“I would never--”

He gave her a look.

“I _probably_ would never do that.”

“Let’s just get to the airport before you get any worse, okay?” Tony took her by the elbow and steered her up the ramp.

“Good luck with the bird teeth, Rabbit,” she called.

“Thanks for nothing, Lucy,” Rabbit chattered, crossing his paws and twitching his tail. “Don’t come crying to me when he eats the sun, because you didn’t help.”

“Pretty sure Ixquic and her kids have got this one.” She waved cheerfully. “I’m on tv?”

“Yeah, a little.”

“Shit.”

“Well, it could be worse,” Tony offered. “Most of what wound up on tv was the giant bunny talking smack about various things, which even in a 24-hour news cycle most networks are a little leery of broadcasting. Especially since he somehow wound up looking a little green-screened, so it looks like everybody’s getting punked.”

“Small favors,” Lucy muttered, swaying. “On the off chance it comes up, I really can’t recommend toad poison as a narcotic.”

“I appreciate that bit of life-advice.”

“I’m kind of surprised they let you come alone.”

“Well, I was supposed to be a whole team of goons, but you know. Budget cuts.”

She snorted.

*****

Tony skidded to a halt and looked around. The bare open-plan office and glass walls didn’t leave much room for hiding. Coulson and Hank looked at him, concerned, and he dropped his voice. 

“Fury’s not around, is he?”

“No, he’s busy. Why?” Phil asked. “And where’s Jones?”

“Uh, that’s kind of the thing.”

“You couldn’t bring her in?” Hank sighed.

“No, I brought her in. I told her Mimir was singing like a canary and that we needed her to set the record straight. She’s here. Somewhere. She just kind of poofed out of sight, though. She’s really, stupidly high.”

Phil’s lips pursed. “There’s an intoxicated magician roving the Hub without an escort.”

“Yup. If it’s any consolation, she was in a good mood right before she disappeared?” Tony said, holding his hands up.

“That’s not much of a consolation at all, Tony.” Phil pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hank, go check the snack machines. Tony, go check the lounges. I’ll alert security and have them start a scan for her. What’s she on, mushrooms? Pot? Acid?”

“Um, apparently in the course of the altercation that was broadcast earlier, she bit a toad. Said toad’s skin had hallucinogenic properties,” Tony told him. His shoulders slumped. “Huh. Turns out there _is_ a way to make that sound slightly less asinine.”

“She bit a...what, a bufo toad?” Hank asked incredulously.

“And we’re right back to it sounding completely insane.”

“That’s because it is insane. What’d she do, tackle it with her face?”

“I refrained from asking, Hank.” Tony ran his hands through his hair. “Primarily because I didn’t want to know, but secondarily because I don’t think it matters.”

“I think it might,” Hank objected.

“Nope. Pretty sure that’s up there with how Volstagg drank us all under the table but was still sober enough to be the designated driver that one time, and how Sif managed to conceal an entire sword on her person when going through airport security that other time, and how Senator Stern keeps getting elected all the time.” Tony smiled brightly. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go check the lounges, like Coulson asked me to, because I’m capable of following directions, _Hank_.”

He jogged off before Hank could say anything else, and Phil sighed.

“If you find her, don’t mention that Frigga’s here,” he said, patting Hank on the shoulder. “And see if you can get her to medical.”

“With what?” Hank asked. “I don’t think bufotenin intoxication makes people particularly suggestible.”

“Just think of something. If she was willing to get on a plane with Stark and then just wander off, she’s probably doped to the gills.” He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “At least it’s not mutated fly-mites this time.”

Hank shivered. “Don’t even joke. I think I can still feel their spiky little legs. Though I don’t think it’s possible to get rid of magicians with diatomaceous earth.”

*****

Lucy sidled up to Jan and elbowed her in the ribs. “How’s things, Wasp?”

“What in the name of--” Jan almost dropped a petri dish. “Jones?”

“In the flesh. I had to dodge a couple of things, so I thought I’d come say hi to the dodo.”

“Well, you’re in the wrong state for that. She’s in the Baxter Building. Sue Storm’s pet-sitting for me.” Jan looked around. “How did you even get in here? There’s like five different check-points between here and anything Coulson would let you access.”

“I came in with Stark. Coulson probably doesn’t even know I’m here yet.” Lucy lit a cigarette, and Jan glared at her.

“No-smoking area, Jones.”

“I forgive whoever erroneously labeled this room that, then.” She snagged an empty dish and used it as an ashtray. “Anyway, check-points are only a problem if you stop to be checked. If you just keep right on walking, they’re a self-solving problem.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Jan sighed.

“And I don’t think you need a pet-sitter.”

“I absolutely need a pet-sitter. I’m far too busy right now to look after that bird properly. Between Sue and the boys, it’s getting way more attention over there.”

Lucy chewed her lip for a long moment. “Does it also have the run of Richards’s lab?”

“It’s funny, but now that you mention it, I think that bird picked up a few of your tricks when it comes to evading security protocols. Sue said she made a hell of a mess just a few days ago, cost him almost a month’s worth of work,” Jan said, her eyes wide and perfectly innocent.

“Your need for a pet-sitter wouldn’t happen to coincide with Richards pissing his wife off something fierce, would it?” Her green eyes narrowed for a moment. “I could have rented that little jerk out, couldn’t I have?”

“I don’t know what you’re implying, but I would never do something as underhanded as that to a close friend’s dick of a husband and Hank’s professional rival.”

“No, of course not.” Lucy snorted. “So, when you go rogue, let me know. I’d strongly consider working with whatever organization you sign on with, even if I’ve blown them up a lot in the past.”

“Did you actually want something?” Jan asked, carefully putting away the rest of the equipment. “Are you here to see Frigga? Coulson didn’t say anything about expecting you this quick.”

“Shit, Thor’s mom is here? That’s great. Just great.” Lucy brightened abruptly. “Oh, hey. Now’s your chance to make good on that thing you promised to do. With the files, and the convincing.” She waved her hands vaguely. “The _thing_.”

Jan eyed her critically. “Are you sure you’re not suffering from a head injury? Or meningitis? Because I swear you’re getting less articulate the longer I stand here, and your pupils are the size of dinner plates.”

“I am not suffering from a head injury,” she snapped. “I may--emphasis on _may_ , here--have bitten a cane toad this morning. And now I’m high. But dinner plates is an improvement, so nyah.”

“Why on earth would you do that?” Jan sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Just, honestly, why?”

“Because I was on vacation, and I wasn’t prepared for shit getting that out of hand! And none of this was a planned thing! I was just going to have a few more drinks and take a swim and maybe eat a peyote button and go hang out by some old ruins and commune with the tourists!” she protested. “And then I got bum-rushed by a bunch of angry wildlife because I guess this is the one time a year they get an all-you-can-eat buffet, and they’ve been looking forward to eating the hell out of baby turtles, and I kind of fucked that up for them. Which seriously? If you can at all possibly avoid it, I can’t recommend starting to get really fucked up in the middle of a bird attack. Do you have any idea how horrific herons look when you’re high?”

“No, I don’t. Because I’m a functional adult.”

“Well, la-di-dah,” Lucy said sourly.

“Anyway, I needed to talk to you about that.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and Lucy tilted her head.

“You’re not allowed to weasel out of it,” she warned. “Eventually I am going to stop being high, and then I’ll be capable of doing something terrible and subtle if you try to weasel out of it.”

“You remember that mess with HYDRA and the helicarrier?”

“I heard something about that, yeah,” Lucy said slowly.

“Well, HYDRA took the opportunity to wipe Schmidt’s files. We’re not sure how they gained access to the data, but they did.”

Lucy pursed her lips and then took a deep breath. _Goddammit, play it cool, play it cool, this is the worst conceivable time to be high._

“You, uh, you realize that I don’t care about Schmidt’s files?” she managed. “Or am I having auditory hallucinations, too?”

“Purple monkey dishwasher,” Jan said cheerfully.

She groaned theatrically and rested her forehead on the counter. “I hate you so much right now.”

Jan’s smile faded, and she spread her hands once Lucy straightened back up.

“Unfortunately, when they took out the databank with our information on Schmidt, there was a lot of collateral damage. Your files got wiped, too.”

“So?”

“So, I can’t convince the Asgardians of anything with data that’s not there,” Jan explained patiently.

“You’re SHIELD. You’ve got files on everybody and their grandmother. Just cross-reference and reconstruct.” She swayed as the ground seemed to tilt under her. “That’s a thing, right?”

“You know, I expected you to be more pissed off and less pragmatic about this.”

“Oh, I’m a seething volcano of rage, it’s just on the inside. You know, like clowns?” she asked quickly. She realized she was sweating and looking everywhere but at Jan, and there was a faint buzz of something that felt like guilt at the back of her mind. “I’m just going to lie on the floor a little until the planet stops revolving. Or rotating. The one where we spin on our axis.”

“Rotating. And if the planet stops rotating, we’re all going to die, so please don’t do anything that would lead to that.” 

“You’re massively overestimating my abilities as a magician. Though now that you mention it, I bet I could really make a name for myself if--”

“Nope. We’re just cutting that train of thought off right now,” Jan said firmly. “Why are you sweating bullets and looking like I caught you with your hand in the cookie jar? Should I get your mom, and she can ask you?”

“She’s not my mom, and the floor is thirty degrees off horizontal, and this is really the worst. Are you sure you can’t just dig out the hard copies of all my stuff and show her my school pictures from like third grade or something?” she groaned. “You’re clever enough to turn that stupid bird into an engine of mass destruction. Just make something up!”

“I’m not making something up for Thor’s mom!” Jan said, looking injured. “She’s the nicest lady I’ve ever met. She invited us over for dinner the last time she was on Earth. I like her a lot better than I like you.”

“Then think of it as a favor you’re doing her, then. Does a nice lady like that deserve a daughter who can’t go three days without causing an international incident and is on on the WWF’s most-wanted list?”

Jan stared at her. “What’d you do to the World Wrestling Federation? Do I want to know? I probably don’t want to know.”

“The World Wildlife Fund,” Lucy corrected flatly.

“Oh.” Jan frowned. “What did you do to the World Wildlife Fund? Aside from hit a bunch of migratory waterfowl with a stick.”

“ _Allegedly_ hit a bunch of migratory waterfowl with a stick.” Lucy sighed. “Did you know that yeti are technically classed as wildlife in spite of having a complicated social structure, a language, and a tax code?”

Jan’s lip twitched. “Okay, let’s go find some school photos of you.”

“See? I knew you’d see it my way.”


	70. Chapter 70

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the unscheduled hiatus, everybody! Things should be back on track for next week.

“And that's why I can’t possibly be your adopted alien baby.” Lucy gestured grandly at the display behind her. Frigga nodded politely, Thor beamed at her, and Jan covered her worried grimace with her hand. “I’m not hearing grudging agreement. Jan, why am I not hearing grudging agreement?”

“It was a valiant effort,” Thor offered.

“Yes, quite valiant,” Frigga murmured, glancing at her son.

Lucy sighed in exasperation, turned around, and went to point firmly at a spot on the map only to pause, her irritation sliding into confusion.

“Um. What.” She looked at Jan, who shrugged.

“I honestly don’t know. You lost me at the gummy bear re-enactment of the Battle of Sharpsburg and its relation to current Six Flags locations.”

“At the what?” Her brows furrowed. “Where did I get all that red string? And the thumbtacks? And the production stills from _Thelma & Louise_?”

“I retrieved the thumbtacks from the SHIELD supply closet,” Thor said. “They were most accommodating when they saw what you were constructing.”

“A great big wall of crazy? Yeah, I bet they were.” She rubbed her face. “I don't suppose I made a cogent point during any of this?”

“Your accounting of the unlikelihood of your magic working on Asgard was logical and well-reasoned,” Frigga assured her.

“I, uh, told you that, huh?” Lucy suppressed a cringe. She vaguely remembered talking to Stark on the beach. It was a blurred haze after that, with certain bright bits of comparative normalcy. She suspected the bulk of them had occurred within the last hour, but they were fragmented enough that she wouldn’t put any bets on it. She wondered if she’d let it slip to Jan that she’d been the one to break the files in the first place.

“It’s completely incorrect, but it was at least internally consistent.”

“Well, that's the important thing, I guess.”

“Have you stopped having visions?” Thor asked.

“Visions?”

“You indulged in too much of a substance that brings visions,” Frigga prompted. “Have they faded?”

“That’s not...quite what happened. And yes, mostly. I think.” She squinted at the spider’s web of bright string stretching back and forth across half the room, seemingly at random, and it shimmered and pulsed. She could almost still see what she’d been doing before, but it was fragile and transitory. The dinner plates, on the other hand.... “Why is there a stack of my grandmother’s china on the table?”

“You were using it to demonstrate a theory about the alignment of the realms,” Frigga explained.

“Friend Erik was most intrigued.”

“Selvig was here? Where’d he go?”

“To bed. It’s four in the morning,” Jan said.

“I believe he went to check your calculations, actually,” Thor corrected sheepishly. “He and Lady Jane can resist the call of sleep most manfully when in pursuit of a breakthrough.”

“How long have I been...?” She flapped a hand at the string.

“Tripping balls? A while,” Jan said.

“Incorporating the aforementioned tripping into a new and interesting method of interior decorating,” she clarified.

“Since seven.”

“Wow.” She leaned back against the wall. “Well. I officially apologize for keeping everyone so long.”

“They ordered in.”

Lucy glanced at the pile of containers and cartons in the trash and sighed.

“It was no more taxing than an experimental saga recital,” Frigga assured her.

“Doesn’t everybody get to get drunk while the bards sing their five-hour marathon songs, though?” she asked, sneaking a look at Jan. The Wasp had gone poker-faced and was giving her no warning about potential pitfalls. “Or did you guys get a keg delivered, too?”

“Director Fury said that we were not allowed to become inebriated unless it appeared that you might end the world and there was nothing we might do to prevent it,” Thor replied.

“Sucks to be you guys,” Lucy muttered. 

“You at least did not spend an hour describing the lineage of the hero’s favorite pack-horse,” Frigga offered.

Lucy cocked her head. “Was that a joke, or have you had performers actually do that?”

“Only one,” Thor sighed. “It was not well-received. The bard in question chose to cut that verse when he next sang the lay.”

“Good call.” She glanced around the room. If there were cameras, she could theoretically find footage of what she’d said. Why the fuck had she bitten that toad? What had fucking possessed her not to just punch it like a human being? _Because I have the worst instincts in recorded human history._

“And here I was going to hold the prolonged explanation of how fossil fuels work against you, Jones,” Jan grunted. “Was it really an hour, or did it just seem like an hour?”

“It was at least an hour. When I realized that he wasn’t going to stop anytime soon, I made a careful note of the time.” Frigga smiled. “We did away with the minimum length requirements afterwards. It seemed a bit silly to keep the tradition when everyone inevitably falls asleep by the tenth hour, anyway.”

“Is the fossil fuel thing why there are a bunch of toy dinosaurs?”

“No, they’re actually representing Hooker’s men. You weren’t very clear on why they had to be dinosaurs, but you were very insistent about it.”

“I see.”

“Any light you think you can shed on that one now? Richards made me promise to text him if I ever found out.”

“I think I might have been going somewhere with a commentary on his campaign tactics.” She frowned. “Maybe. Richards was here?”

“Barton might have telecast some of this.” Jan coughed. “For training purposes.”

“Training--?”

“And the archives.”

“The archives?”

Lucy took a deep breath and counted to ten. _It can’t possibly be worse than the time I forgot the Jumbotron doesn’t have speakers. I can erase everything I need to later._

“Did I at least get around to discussing my own lineage?” she asked. “Like, at all?”

“Does bringing up the Plaza de las Tres Culturas count?” Jan asked.

Lucy felt her heart skip a beat. Okay, so it could be worse than the time she’d forgotten the Jumbotron didn’t have speakers. Way worse. “No, it does not.”

“Thor, Miss van Dyne, would you excuse us for a moment?” Frigga asked gently.

“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” Jan said, watching her carefully.

“It’s a fucking terrible idea, actually.” Lucy smiled brightly. “Catastrophically, horribly bad.”

She snapped her fingers and took a step forward. The world blurred, then resolved itself into a small volcanic island. Not the one she’d been aiming for, but close enough. She sat down on the beach and rested her head on her knees until a swirl of vertigo passed. Teleporting through the aftereffects of a hallucinogen was even less fun than she remembered.

“I suppose this is one way to accomplish what I asked,” Frigga sighed behind her.

“Holy mother of Christ _what the fuck_?”

She shot to her feet, lost her balance, and staggered backwards into the surf. A particularly large and bitterly cold wave crashed behind her, and she blinked down at her abruptly soaked clothes. 

“I...you...I didn’t...what?” she sputtered. “ _How_?”

Frigga suppressed a fond smile and reached down to help her up.

“Thor did mention that I was a sorceress, didn’t he?” she asked. Lucy deflated.

“He might’ve.” She stared at the extended hand for a moment before taking it. “I have seaweed in my hair, don’t I?”

“You might.” Frigga pulled her to her feet without apparent effort. “Here.”

She carded it out carefully and flicked the dross back into the surf, and Lucy forced herself to keep still. The full moon was warping the shadows and making the sand glow, and Frigga’s fingers were gentle in her hair, and she wanted to bolt so badly she could taste it along with the brine. She wiped her face and wrung out the hem of her shirt.

“I can put it up for you, if you like,” Frigga murmured.

“I’m going to have to pass on that one,” she said tightly. “You should get back to Thor. Your clothes are going to get ruined.”

“You and I need to talk, and if it ruins my clothes, then so be it.” She looked around, then picked out a large, flattish boulder and made her way to it. “Is this where you come to meditate?”

“Uh, not exactly.” She followed reluctantly. “Apparently it’s where I come to be a human cartoon.”

“There _is_ a reason visions are typically sought in isolation,” Frigga pointed out.

“This wasn’t exactly intentional. Nothing in the past couple of months has actually been, strictly speaking, intentional.” She rolled her shoulders and stretched her back and channeled enough heat into her skin that her wet clothes began to steam dry. “Just so you know.”

She flopped down on the sand and leaned back against the stone. “You should probably let Thor know where you are, before SHIELD starts firing missiles and dispatching drones at things.”

“Thor knows he need not be concerned with my safety while I’m with you.”

“Due respect, but neither of you _know_ that,” Lucy grunted. She was crashing, and she could feel it. She couldn’t tell if she was starving or about to throw up, and everything ached.

“I know that you reciprocate the level of trust you’re shown,” Frigga told her firmly. 

Lucy snorted. “I don’t--”

“It bothers you to be thought trustworthy because you feel the burden it imposes. You cultivate a reputation that allows you to avoid it.”

Lucy crossed her arms sullenly. “None of that is true.”

“It isn’t the flaw you think it is,” she sighed, resting her hand on Lucy’s shoulder. “Though I can’t say I approve of your reaction to it.”

“My parents were great. My grandparents were great. My aunt’s okay for the life she’s had. I don’t want or need a new family.” She hugged her knees to her chest. Dehydration. That’s what she was feeling. Dehydration and exhaustion. And Frigga’s warm, comforting hand.

“Everyone needs a family.”

“I don’t.” She sounded tired and fussy, and she knew it. Well, fuck it. She _was_ tired and fussy. Tired and fussy and sick to death of arguing with aliens.

Frigga slid closer and pulled her hair away from her face. “Why is it so difficult for you to accept people caring for you?”

“I can see the price tag,” she muttered darkly.

“You purposely ignore the dividends.” She began weaving Lucy’s hair into a loose braid. “I could more easily accept that you don’t want to come home if I didn’t see you alone and lost, child.”

“This is home. I _am_ home.” She twisted around to face the queen, who let her dark hair run through her fingers. “Why can’t you people just leave me alone? I mean, really, honestly, _why_?”

“Because I miss you,” Frigga said simply, a small, pained smile gracing her face. “I love you, and I miss you, and I don’t want to see you suffer needlessly.”

“It’s not me you miss.” Tears pricked at her eyes, and she looked away, glaring at the ocean. It was the hormonal roller coaster from the bufotoxin trip and the low blood-sugar from not eating and the fundamental unfairness of someone loving her without actually loving _her_ , and she’d be damned if she was going to start crying in front of an alien queen.

“You are yourself, with all your cleverness and your pride and your temper and your wonder.” Frigga leaned forward and used her sleeve to dab at her cheek. “That you are also different than you were is not to be wondered at. You’ve grown here. You’ve shaped yourself to this world, just as you shaped yourself to Asgard before. It wouldn’t be the first time one of my children has come to Midgard and come away...changed.”

“Even if I were who you think I am, I have no interest in coming away at all.”

“Asgard is beautiful. You should at least see it before you make up your mind.”

“Earth has breakfast burritos and snow leopards and arguments about what ‘biscuit’ means. I don’t think I’m going to change my mind, and I don’t need to see Asgard.” She wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do this.”

“There’s no shame in weeping.” Frigga stroked her face, her eyes sad. “This is a hard thing, for you no less than for us.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one bawling in front of an extradimensional dignitary.” She scowled. “Look, I’m starving. I’m going to summon some food from beyond the plains of reality, or at least the nearest mainland. Because if I don’t get something to eat soon, I’m going to make an even bigger ass of myself, and this is probably going to turn into a Jerry Springer-worthy mess with a quickness. Not that it isn’t already, but I mean, it’s just….It’s _easier_ when there’s no one waiting in the wings to surprise you. You think we can sort of stick a pin in this until after I’ve put a pound or so of food in my face?”

“I’m not going anywhere while you still need me,” Frigga assured her.

“Great. Just great.” Lucy scrubbed her hands over her scalp. “Might as well get comfortable, then. You like sweet peppers?”


	71. Chapter 71

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now beta-read by the estimable Coiria!

“You sure--”

Frigga gave her a steady look, and Lucy flushed and swallowed the mouthful of food she’d been trying to talk around.

“You sure you don’t want one?” she asked.

“Thank you for the offer, but no.” 

“They’re good.” Lucy adjusted the wrap on the burrito. “Not food-for-the-gods good, but still. Pretty good.”

“Thor speaks very highly of Midgardian food,” Frigga said with a warm smile. “I’ve found his description to be accurate. But still, no thank you. Are you feeling better?”

“I’m not going to start crying again, if that’s what you’re asking,” Lucy grunted. She wasn’t sure which irritated her more, the fact that she’d done it or the fact that she no longer had the energy to be properly angry about it. She just wanted to crawl into a hole and devise a workable plan for making the last several days never have happened. She felt marginally better with a bit of food in her stomach, but she was still bone-tired and aching.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“So snotting all over foreign dignitaries isn’t an unusual occurrence in Asgard? You might want to try cutting off the mead a little earlier in the evening.”

“I’ll take it under advisement,” Frigga said dryly. Her expression softened. “I’m hardly unaware of the emotional toll that vision-herbs can take.”

“Yeah, well.” Lucy shifted uncomfortably and turned her attention back to the breakfast burrito. “Good for you.”

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Not so long as you don’t mind if I don’t answer it.” _And it doesn’t involve me moving to another dimension,_ she added silently.

Frigga shook her head, fond exasperation flickering in her eyes. “What do you think of Jane?”

“I, uh. Jane Foster? With the intern and the old dude and the science?” she asked, startled.

She tilted her head. “Is my son seeking the hand of more than one woman called Jane?”

“No, that’s just genuinely not where I expected this to go.” Lucy took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. “Um, she seems nice? She’s not too bad for an action-scientist, really. If I was looking for a career in keeping things unexploded for science, I wouldn’t mind signing on with her crew.”

“You like her, then?” Frigga prompted.

“Eh, she’s all right. Why?”

“Thor said that the two of you had spent some time together recently. I was wondering what your opinion was.”

“I meant, why are you asking _me_?” she clarified.

“ _Because your opinion is something I value_.”

“You know, when you use your mom-voice, it’s terrifying. I mean, Fury could stand to learn a thing or two from your mom-voice.” Lucy gave her a long, measuring look. “You worried about him, or about her?”

“I’m concerned about both of them, as any mother would be,” Frigga said carefully.

“Uh- _huh_.” Lucy finished the burrito and leaned back against the rock. “Well, obviously you’re well-acquainted with the way Thor goes galloping into a fight with that hammer out?”

“Obviously.” Frigga’s lips twitched up in a slight smile. 

“Jane’s the sort of person who’s the same way about the unknown.”

“That is less comforting than it could be,” Frigga sighed.

“It’s not meant to be comforting.” Lucy shrugged. “I am fresh out of comforting right now. And it takes a special sort of jerk to hear crazy-talk about interdimensional portals and magic hammers and just keep on rolling. If she was going to be sensible about weird shit, she’d have just let SHIELD handle it, and then where would we be?”

“Where indeed?” Frigga asked softly.

Lucy considered what she knew about the actual answer to that question and frowned. _Not getting sucked any further into this drama, no I’m not…_

“Shouldn’t you be asking Sif and the Three Musketeers about this and not, well, me?” she demanded. “They’ve kind of had a front row seat for the entire circus.”

Frigga spread her hands. “They tell me that she’s a good woman, and that Thor loves her dearly. They tell me that she and her companions seem to have affection in equal measure for him. They tell me that she makes him happy, and that he seems to make her happy as well.”

“I’m hearing a ‘but’ the size of Texas in there somewhere,” Lucy muttered.

“But she is mortal, she is of another realm, and she is a commoner,” Frigga finished, twisting the trailing edge of her sleeve in her fingers. “Any one of these might cause a pair of lovers to founder. All coming together…”

“Could be worse,” Lucy pointed out. “She could have been not-a-commoner.”

Frigga nodded. “Indeed. At least it needn’t be a political alliance, whatever your Lord Fury might wish to make of it. But if they were to marry, she would have a position. I fear she might lack the intuition to navigate it, even if she takes to the training.”

“I don’t know how it is on Asgard. Literally no idea.” Lucy waved her hands. “But I do know that humans are naturally political animals, and a lack of resources tends to sharpen everybody’s throat-cutting edge. Academia? Has been _extremely_ lacking in resources the past few decades. If it came down to it, I think she’d do all right. But I don’t think it’s going to come down to it, because I think there’s going to be a natural shelf-life here when she starts aging and he doesn’t.”

“Thor would hardly abandon her for that,” Frigga said, an edge creeping into her tone.

“No, I’m sure he wouldn’t. But she’s going to look at him and start getting weirded out and realize that maybe this was a bad idea and take some space to get her head on straight and then gradually things that aren’t him are going to take up more of her life and then she’ll come to the conclusion that she just needs to tear the band-aid off and end it, for both their sakes.” Lucy shrugged. “I mean, assuming it doesn’t fizzle out naturally in the next few years. People usually don’t click and then stay together forever.”

“You’re telling me Midgardians are a fickle breed, then?” 

“Pretty sure you knew that already,” Lucy said, frowning. “I feel like I should be calling you ‘your majesty’ or something.”

“Please don’t.” The queen shuddered a little. “SHIELD’s diplomats can’t seem to go two seconds without saying it.”

“Seems like something you should be used to by now. You’ve been Bosslady of Asgard for how many millenia?”

“There’s a different edge to it when they say it. And trying to begin diplomatic relations with one part of one government controlling one portion of an entire realm is a strange affair to begin with.”

“We can’t be the only place that doesn’t have its act together,” Lucy huffed. “I mean, just last ice age you guys were kicking the hell out of, uh, giants? Who were invading everyone else? That sort of thing’s usually pretty good for fragmenting the political landscape.”

“Not quite how the history books put it,” Frigga said. “Fragmenting the political landscape in this case means perhaps a handful of factions bickering over which way the unified government should lean, or two or three rival kingdoms with whom our goal is to maintain a peaceable unity. It does not entail the creation of a thousand bickering nation-states the size of a duchy who are each individually capable of destroying the realm.”

“In our defense, we only have like two hundred bickering nation-states, and most of them are way bigger than a duchy. Unless Asgardian duchies are huge?” 

“My point stands.”

“Well, we usually try to get around that by just going through the UN.”

“The what?” Frigga tilted her head, and Lucy fidgeted.

“The UN?” she repeated. “United Nations?”

“I’m afraid I still don’t understand.”

Lucy rubbed her eyes. “Darcy or van Dyne would be way better people to explain this to you than I would.”

“Why?” Frigga asked. “You seemed to be acquitting yourself quite well.”

“My direct experience with the UN usually involves them not taking my calls or politely asking me and the ambassador of whatever country I’m trying to deal with to take it outside because they don’t care about unilateral slap fights with stateless actors. This is actually Darcy’s area of expertise, and the Wasp deals with them on a regular basis. So, while I’m surprised it hasn’t come up in conversation, I’m not the person to really walk you through it. And they might have some sort of special rules about ignoring anybody that walks in claiming to be a god that I’m not aware of because I haven’t done that yet.”

“You say that as if you have plans to,” she sighed.

“I don’t, but, you know. Never say never.” She hadn’t exactly planned on getting high as a kite and trying to explain earth politics to an alien queen, either, but here she was. She shook herself. “You know, I could use some coffee. You? I mean, it’s gotta be almost dawn. Coffee sounds good, right?”

“If you wish.”

She started to get up. “Be right back, then--”

“I’d prefer if we went together.”

“Or I could go ahead and just order in,” Lucy grumbled, settling back down.

“I know you’re tired, child, but this is important,” Frigga chided.

“You’ve got literally the rest of eternity. What can’t wait a few hours?” 

“It’s not a question of it not being able to wait a few hours, it’s a question of being able to find you again if you bolt,” Frigga pointed out. “Though…”

“Yeah?”

“Jane has been offered a more permanent position with Lord Fury’s people.”

Lucy flopped back onto the sand and exhaled noisily. “This could not possibly be any less my business.”

“The overture was made within days of Thor proposing a lengthy visit to Asgard.”

“Of course it was.”

“Do you think she’ll accept it?” Frigga asked.

“Nope.” She made a sharp sign and snatched a full pot of coffee out of the air. She held it in her hands and drummed her fingertips against it. “It’s probably not even a serious offer, just Fury throwing his weight around. SHIELD by and large is not interested in things that can’t be effectively weaponized. Foster’s brilliant, but she’s best at things that don’t translate into much more than incidental property damage. They can get somebody better, for cheaper, with fewer political complications, if all they want is explosions. And I don’t think Jane’s too interested in hanging around with a bunch of government goons who are only pretending to be interested in her discoveries. She wants to geek out with fellow enthusiasts and show off her work to people who actually get it.”

“That’s...reassuring.” She shook her head. “Put that down before you burn yourself.”

“Fireproof,” Lucy grunted. “So Foster’s off to Asgard?” 

She considered the information. She wouldn’t be going alone. Thor would doubtless be going with her. Depending on what ‘lengthy’ meant, she could be looking at a year free of alien psychodrama.

“She has yet to demure.”

“I’d have thought she’d jump at the chance.” She caught Frigga’s look and feigned a deep and overwhelming interest in the coffee. “Not that she isn’t! Seriously, none of this is my business.”

“She has expressed a decided interest. It’s merely that arrangements must be made.”

“Grants tied up, interns transferred to other supervisors, that sort of thing?” Lucy offered.

“As you say,” Frigga sighed. “Is this Midgardian custom, then?”

“I don’t have a lot of direct experience with it, really. Not having to worry about administrative details is one of the biggest perks of being completely irresponsible, largely unreliable, and frequently drunk,” Lucy pointed out. “People usually stop asking me to handle budgets the first time I add a line-item for newts. I’d think you guys would be pretty into that sort of thing, though. It’s not like you can just hit a pause button on a whole kingdom every time you want to ride off on an adventure.”

“We have trusted advisors and seneschals to keep things running smoothly in the event of emergencies.” Lucy raised an eyebrow, and Frigga smiled. “Or, yes, riding off on adventures.”

“Well, most Midgardians don’t have someone to handle that for them, and, in terms of people who are willing to go rabbiting after cosmic tornadoes, Foster’s reasonably responsible. If she’s already getting things settled, then my guess is she’s made up her mind to go.”

“In spite of Fury’s offer?” she asked.

“I get the feeling she knows SHIELD would be a good friend to have but not who she’d necessarily want to work for.” Lucy chewed her lip. “So, why are you listening to me about any of this again? I mean, apart from valuing my opinion.”

Frigga reached down to smooth Lucy’s hair back. She ducked, but not quickly enough.

“Because I have more than one child to fret over, and because I know very few Midgardians who are not also Fury’s creatures.”

“That makes a certain amount of sense,” Lucy admitted. “Though I could secretly be working for SHIELD. I’m pretty sure they’ve got double-secret-clearance guys running around that are actually quintuple spies by now.”

“Given the way he swears and storms about whenever your endeavors come to the attention of your journalists, I strongly doubt you’re in his pay,” Frigga chuckled.

“He could just be putting on a show. Which he does do, by the way. I think half of the things he winds Stark up about not being allowed are exactly what he wants Stark to do, except it would be illegal for him to sign the orders. And then Stark would suddenly have a problem with carrying them out.”

Frigga raised her eyebrows, and she sighed.

“And yes, I do understand the non-zero amount of irony in me saying that about somebody else. I do have some level of self-awareness.”

“I appreciate you staying to talk with me. And yes,” she held up a hand, “I know it wasn’t precisely voluntary. I do hope you’ll forgive me for the imposition.”

Lucy grunted and rubbed the back of her neck. “Don’t expect me to be super-gracious about it at this hour.”

“Of course not,” Frigga laughed. “I’ll let you be, then.”

“You can get yourself back?” Lucy asked warily.

“I do have some experience with this, yes.” She stood up and then stooped, pressing a kiss to Lucy’s forehead. “Sleep well.”

Lucy waited until a few seconds after she’d vanished to wipe her face on her sleeve.

“Why is everybody I know so fucking weird?” she groaned.


	72. Chapter 72

“I don’t suppose anyone wants to explain how a known supercriminal got to run loose in my facility, commandeer my office supplies, and abscond with my guests, and I’m only just now hearing about it?” Fury asked, his tone deceptively calm.

“The first part actually sort of accounts for the second part,” Tony pointed out cheerfully. “You’re only hearing about it now because nobody wanted to tell you about any of the rest.”

Fury stared at him, his eyebrow climbing.

“She was more or less contained,” Jan offered. “And, for that matter, cooperative.”

“The walking volcano with the power to rewrite reality is _definitionally_ uncontainable, people. I’m pretty sure there were several memos sent out to that effect. And when she’s cooperative, half the time it’s a trap and half the time it’s not worth the trouble. Which one was it this time?”

“We’re pretty sure it wasn’t a trap,” Steve told him.

“And we have reason to believe that Frigga went of her own free will,” Natasha broke in, shooting a glare at Tony. He rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything. “She’s a magician in her own right, and Thor is confident that there would have been evidence of a struggle if Jones was abducting her.”

“So the good news is that the entire Hub wasn’t turned into newts?” Fury growled.

“Well, yeah. Things would be way worse if half of SHIELD’s support staff needed regular moistening and….” Tony paused.

“And _what_?”

“And it turns out I don’t know nearly as much about newts as I thought I did,” he finished weakly. He rubbed the back of his neck. “And little newt ladders to reach all the computers?”

Hank stared at him for a minute before rubbing his face. He turned to Fury. “Can’t this just be Thor’s problem for once? I mean, it’s his family. Can’t he straighten it out?”

“No, we cannot just write this off as an interdimensional domestic,” Fury snapped. “For one thing, he’s busy filling out the customs forms on that talking head you idiots signed for.”

“We didn’t sign for them,” Tony protested. “The talking rabbit signed for them and then dropped it off with us.”

“Shouldn’t Phil be the one yelling at us about all this?” Clint asked. “Really, sir, you’ve got more important things to do.”

“You can have Agent Coulson back when I’m sure you all understand that the Hub is not your own personal clubhouse.”

“Yeah, guys, we’ve got the tower for that,” Tony chimed in. Fury glared at him.

“Do I need to show you people footage from the interrogation where she claimed to have changed how grapes taste just to mess with cough syrup manufacturers?”

“She can’t really _do_ things like that, though,” Hank sighed. “Right?”

“Of course she can’t,” Jan scoffed. “That would require some ability to focus for more than forty-eight hours.”

Hank pursed his lips. “Um, I was thinking more on account of just power levels, Jan.”

“Oh. Well. Pretty sure she’s got the juice, and she definitely had access to a time machine.” Jan caught Hank’s horrified look. “What? It’s not like grapes can fight back. And really, would we want to live in a world where grapes tasted like grape flavoring? Because grape flavoring is pretty gross.”

“I don’t want to live in a world where what our fruit tastes like is at the whim of a petulant magician with strong feelings about the Oxford comma.”

“What’s wrong with having strong feelings about the Oxford comma?” Natasha asked.

“Nothing,” Hank said quickly. “I’m just pretty sure there are more important things for magicians to sulk over. I mean, magic, right?”

“Says the man whose bent the majority of his funding to studying insects,” Tony muttered.

“Excuse me?”

“I didn’t say anything.” Tony flashed him his most irritating grin.

“Bicker about petty bullshit on your own time, the pack of you,” Fury snapped. “I want as many eyes as we can spare on her contacts, and I want the eyes we have on HYDRA updated to call home if she turns up there.”

“She’s definitely not turning up there,” Clint said. “She burned that bridge down but good.”

“I distinctly remember not asking for your opinion on this, Barton.”

“Yes, sir.” Clint flushed and stood up straighter.

“Find the visiting potentate of a highly advanced alien dimension, and see if you can pry her away from the Human Disaster.”

“What if she wants to take Jones with her to Asgard?” Tony asked. “Does that fall under ‘not our problem’?”

“You know how when kids are being good, they’re your kid, and when they’re being bad, they’re your co-parent’s kid?” Jan asked, frowning.

“I got a RISUG shot to prevent finding out precisely that sort of thing, so no.”

“Okay, then I’m pretty sure Jones is going to be our problem wherever she winds up,” she told him, crossing her arms and rolling her eyes. “Clearer?”

“What if we declare no-take-backs?” Tony looked at Fury. “Can we do that? We can, can’t we? We can draw up a form for that, right?”

“We’d have no way of making it stick, and you know it. We’re talking about a civilization that can travel from dimension to dimension just by yelling for the night watchman.” Fury shook his head. “You’ve got your assignment, people. Stay sharp, and leave your comms on. Just because HYDRA’s still busy putting out fires and watching their own flanks at the moment doesn’t mean we’re back in fighting form or that they won’t take another swipe at us.”

*****

“Are you positive you’re not even the slightest bit concerned for your mother’s safety?” Phil asked, frowning at the forms in his hand.

“I am quite sure, friend Phil. Lucy may have occasion to indulge in a fit of temper with me or with my father, but never with our mother.” Thor sighed and started toward the bowling ball bag. “Truly, I do not wish to confine him to such a small space, but I also do not wish to be subjected to another such torrent of abuse.”

“Thor, I realize that you’ve had a very late night and that these forms are poorly designed--spectacularly so, in fact--but I’m still not sure why you put down ‘before the dawn of time’ as his birth date.” Phil flipped back two pages. “By the same token, ‘your mother’s lover’ is clearly not his occupation.”

“What would you have me do?” Thor growled, lowering himself into the nearest chair. “The instructions clearly called for self-reporting! I’ve faithfully recorded everything precisely as he answered it! If you wished me to correct for obvious lies and bursts of ire, you might have said before we spent half the morning on this. Though if we’re discussing time as humans reckon it, his birth date is as accurate as possible.”

“Please tell me making romantic overtures to matrons isn’t considered gainful employment in Asgard.”

Thor made a face. “It’s considered quite crass to speak of romantic or erotic love in such terms. They’re vocations, not trades. A true artist--”

“Okay, moving on,” Phil said firmly, making a mental note not to bring up the subject again. “None of this is useable. On the other hand, this entire form is a joke, and I’m going to have a very long conversation with the person who patched it together out of various other forms, possibly while high or incredibly sleep-deprived. I’m just going to rubber-stamp this and send him home with you, if you don’t mind.”

“He wishes to speak to my father, and my father is willing to grant him an audience,” Thor said, shrugging. “There is little else for it, unless you wish to claim him as a prisoner or levy some charge against him.”

“We mostly just want him and his personal effects off the planet, honestly.” Phil kneaded his temples. “He has an astonishing talent for making situations worse, and I deeply regret not listening to Jones when she told me it was a bad idea to let things which obviously shouldn’t be speaking engage me in conversation.”

“What personal effects?” Thor asked. “Surely the bag is my sister’s?”

“That golden apple Jones threw at Volstagg came from him, and I’d like it to leave with him.”

“It did?” Thor asked, startled.

“You didn’t know that?”

“Indeed, I did not. An understandable omission, given the circumstances of the time. May I take a closer look at it?”

“Knock yourself out,” Phil sighed. “Jones was trying to get it to you in the first place. She couldn’t tell us anything more about it, so it might be helpful if you can fill in some of the blanks before we pack it up. You never know when a problem’s going to crop up again.”

“I will share any knowledge I have. If it’s what I suspect it is, there are...unfortunate gaps in my understanding. My mother would be able to tell you more,” Thor said, smiling ruefully. “It can be a bit embarrassing, the things we take for granted without looking more deeply into the mechanisms by which they operate.”

*****

“What the fucking fuck did you do to my blender, Rabbit?” Lucy demanded, eyeing the pile of motor components venomously. “Why is it missing parts? And which parts is it missing? I mean, just… _how_ did you do this? You don’t have real thumbs.”

“Just like, magic it back together or something,” Rabbit huffed, waving a paw. He glanced at the bits of metal and pieces of plastic spread out over the kitchen counter and shrugged. “And close the blinds while you’re at it, would you? The glare is killing me.”

“I’m gonna magic you into a stuffed toy in a second,” she grunted. “And why is what’s left _sticky_?”

“You ever make a pitcher of margs and forget about it?” he asked with a sigh.

“I...probably? Maybe? What does that have to do with anything?”

“You ever make a pitcher of margs and forget about not just the pitcher of margs but the seal you should have put back before you screwed the pitcher back in?”

Lucy glared at him, then at the pile of parts, and then back at him. “You lost the o-ring that keeps the stuff you’re blending from going everywhere, and then you let it just leak into the motor for however long.”

“Only like, a night,” he said defensively, his nose twitching.

“And then, what, you tried to get the melted-margarita run-off out of the motor with a hammer?” She went to push her hair out of her face and grimaced when several of the smaller screws stuck to her palm. “I’m actually a little impressed that this thing isn’t absolutely crawling with sugar ants. Which are impossible to get rid of, by the way, and I swear to god, if I have to call Hank motherfucking Pym over this, I am going to turn you into chocolate and gnaw your ears off.”

“Well, there were ants, but then we washed everything off,” Rabbit explained. “And also, you’re a monster. Stay away from my ears.”

“Wait, _we_?” Lucy asked, her voice rising a full octave.

“I wasn’t going to drink a whole pitcher of anything by myself, was I?”

“So help me, if ‘we’ is you and Mimir--”

“Pfft. What’s a guy with no stomach going to do with a frozen drink, Lucha? Be serious for once.” He flicked his ears back. “I invited a couple of girls from around. We had a party. It was no big deal.”

“Ugh, I hate you,” she groaned.

“When’d you turn into such a soccer mom about everything? Jeez.” Rabbit clambered onto the counter and helped himself to a bag of kale chips.

“I don’t fucking know,” Lucy gritted. “Maybe I was always a soccer mom about people breaking into my house, drinking my booze, and wrecking my shit with a dozen of their closest strangers.”

“You won’t help save the world, you’re mad at me for running errands for you, and you care about a ten-dollar Walmart blender.”

“You forgot how now I’ve got sugar ants lurking somewhere in the house, ready to ruin everything when I least expect it,” she snapped. “You didn’t need my help saving the world. I don’t even know why you’re still on my ass about that. I mean, I accept that I might have been a little bit of a jerk about the way I skipped out on it. I will take your word on that. But that particular bit of stupidity has never even remotely needed someone like me involved.”

“Well, maybe it just would have been more fun with you around,” Rabbit grumbled. “You ever think maybe somebody might just want your company every so often?”

“I, uh. Huh. Not where I thought you were going with that.” Her eyes narrowed as she noticed another motor part stuck to her arm. “Wait, if you washed all the sugar-sludge off this thing, why’s it still sticky?”

“I may have tried to glue it back together,” he confessed.

“You tried to _glue_ it back together,” she repeated, gaping at him.

“Like you said, I don’t exactly have thumbs.” He waved his paws at her. “No way to hold a screwdriver, right?”

“How’d you get it apart in the first place if you can’t hold a screwdriver?” Lucy frowned at the components. “You didn’t really use a hammer, did you?”

“I will buy you a new one if we can just stop talking about this.”

“You don’t have any money, Rabbit.”

“I will shoplift you a new one if we can just stop talking about this,” he amended.

“You’re a terrible influence, Rabbit.”

“Seriously, though, why are you so pissed off? That talking-head guy tattle on you to the blond dude?” Rabbit asked. He pulled another handful of chips out of the bag.

“What are you talking about?” she demanded.

“Dude with the goatee said the dude with the head was rolling on you big time. You went to go take care of it, remember? Something about Anaheim.”

“Vanaheim?”

“Whatever.” Rabbit shrugged. “You blew me off for it, so I kind of figured it was important.”

“How many times do I have to explain that I don’t remember?” she grunted. “You know, because I was tripping my fucking ass off. Mimir straight up didn’t enter into it, so far as I can tell. Apparently I spent a really long time chatting it up with my not-mother, though. And I made a diorama of ancient American trade routes out of red string. And then we had a heart-to-heart about earth politics, and I think I may have thrown Thor’s girlfriend under the bus a little.”

“She have it coming?” he asked.

“Noooooooot really, no.” Lucy poked at the motor. “I’ll probably feel a little guilty about it once I’m done feeling generally miserable and sorry for myself. You seriously fucking glued this together, didn’t you? I’m actually a little impressed with the sheer amount of commitment you had to fucking this up.”

“I made a genuine effort to put it back together, and this is the thanks I get,” Rabbit snipped.

“You made a genuine effort to not get caught breaking it,” she retorted.

“So why’re you so cranky? The guilt or the whole spending time with your mom thing?”

“ _Dude_. She’s not my mom.” Lucy chewed her lip. “I may have also thrown SHIELD under the bus in a major way, though, so it’s not a total loss.”

“Until Mimir’s song and dance gets back to your mom,” Rabbit snorted.

“She never even mentioned the prick! I really think that’s either you screwing with me, or Stark screwing with me and you repeating it back to me. I don’t think this is really a thing.”

“I’ll drop it if you drop the blender,” Rabbit offered.

“Is it early enough to light up a blunt yet?” Lucy sighed, sweeping the disassembled appliance into the trashcan. “Because I am seriously feeling the need to do so.”

“It’s five o’clock somewhere, but no offense? You look like maybe you could stand to lay off for a few days. Drink some water, have a decent lunch, catch a nap. You’ll probably feel a little better.” He hastily groomed the kale crumbs out of his fur. “No lie, bufo toads are kind of nasty.”

“Who’s the soccer mom now?” Lucy asked, checking her reflection. She grimaced. As much as she might hate to admit it, he was right. She was feeling it, too, but she was too restless to just take a nap. She wanted to unwind and stop thinking for a few hours. “Fine. Let’s go hit that food-truck down the street and get a few veggie wraps. My treat.”

He jumped off the counter and bolted out the door fast enough to make it bang against the wall. 

“Last one there’s footing the bill!” he called over his shoulder. Lucy stared after him. 

“What the fuck did I _just_ say?” she muttered, following him.


	73. Chapter 73

Fury poured two gin and tonics and slid one across his desk to Phil.

“Sir, it’s barely noon,” Phil pointed out.

“Your pet supervillain told the Queen of Asgard about the UN, and your pet superhero apparently just signed the goddamned fountain of youth out of the evidence room.”

“Ah.” Phil picked up the glass. “Is it worth pointing out that neither of them fit the description of my pets?”

“Sit.” Fury pointed at the one chair free of charts, reports, and old case files. “You’re not leaving until we’ve got a handle on this.”

“That might take a while, sir.”

“Drink your drink, Coulson,” Fury sighed. “And you’re their primary point of contact. They might as well be.”

“How’s Hill taking it?”

Fury shook his head. “You know how Hill feels about magic, and you know how she feels about aliens. So far as Hill is concerned, combining the two is like adding ebola to your dirty bomb. She wants to boot everything not from this dimension back to its homeworld, effective immediately.”

“And you want...?”

“I want everyone to behave themselves for five seconds while we catch our breath,” he said. “Needless to say, I also want world peace. And a pony.”

Phil sipped his drink. “You know, the pony’s actually doable.”

Fury glared at him for a moment, then sat back and laughed. “Yeah, it is, isn’t it? Any chance of getting your girl to stop telling the Asgardians things we’d rather they not know?”

“No,” Phil said. Fury cocked his head, and Phil shrugged. “She likes them better than she likes us. This is excellent gin.”

“Of course it’s excellent gin. It’s my private stash,” Fury told him. “I thought she didn’t like them. She changing her mind on that?”

“Maybe a little. I hear she got along pretty well with Foster and Company,” Phil explained, “and I think Foster and Thor might be a bit of a package deal at this point. That might lead to a bit of a détente at some point in the future. Mostly, though, she just doesn’t like us.”

“You’re just a bundle of good news this morning, aren’t you?” Fury asked. He raised his glass and closed his eye as he drank, holding the liquor on his tongue for a moment before swallowing.

“There’s a slim chance everybody could move to Asgard and get out of our hair for good,” Phil offered.

“What I would like to happen,” Fury sighed, “is for everybody to fall the hell in line. There any sort of New Age hippie retreat we can send Jones on that’ll parcel out some enlightenment about the benefits of signing on as a consultant and not messing with Canada’s ability to deliver mail during the holidays?”

“Believe me, if there were, I’d have sent Tony on it after he commandeered government equipment live on C-SPAN just to peacock a little in front of the Congressional committee,” Phil said.

“At this point, it might be cost-effective to start our own,” Fury mused.

“Or we could stop trying to hire people with huge personal issues, erratic behavior, and massively unstable personal lives.”

“Thank you, Deputy Director Hill,” Fury snorted, finishing his drink. “You know she made that her email signature for a week after the Hulk climbed the Empire State Building?”

“I may have been aware of that, yes,” Phil admitted.

“I get enough sass from everybody else around here, I don’t need it from you,” Fury said after a moment. “We both knew they weren’t all going to be Captain America when we started this.”

Phil’s lips twitched up in a passing smile, and he rotated his glass in his hands. “ _If_ Foster were to eat that apple, it’s my understanding that the mortality objection to them making their arrangement permanent would be off the table for the Asgardians. If the other objections were also taken off the table, we could expect there to be an investment in diplomatic relations with Earth for the foreseeable future.”

“Courtesy of an American national,” Fury said.

“Courtesy of an American national,” Phil agreed.

“Do we have a list of these other objections?”

“I’m sure Thor could provide one. He was extremely excited about the possibility of human progress on the mortality front.”

Fury nodded thoughtfully. “Do we have a pretext for getting Richards in here to give an encore of that little speech of his about the unfairness of a limited human lifespan in the face of a universe of unlimited discoveries to be made?”

“Um.” Phil cleared his throat. “I’m not entirely sure that’s such a good idea.”

Fury poured them both another round. “Oh?”

“Well, not to mince words, he sounded a little bit like a maniac when he made that speech. I don’t think I’m the only one who was calculating exit strategies in case he ripped the cover off a Frankenstein monster and declared that he’d solved the problem.”

“Point,” Fury conceded. “We got anybody who can make more or less the same speech without sounding like the bad guy in a bad sci-fi movie?”

Phil sipped his drink, frowning. “No one’s coming to mind. Which is kind of distressing.”

“Well, keep thinking. I’m sure we’ve got somebody in the wings somewhere who doesn’t get all Bad Idea Theater about science.”

*****

“So, I was thinking,” Darcy said. “You know, about that whole thing Thor mentioned, with the apple of Eden.”

“Idunn,” Jane corrected.

“Whatever. You could do a _lot_ of science with that much time.”

“Yeah, I could.”

“And you wouldn’t have to pick between science and touching Thor, with that much time.” Darcy held her hands out in front of her and made little squeezing motions.

“Oh my god, Darcy,” Jane groaned.

“What?” Darcy protested. “I totally feel like touching Thor is a legitimate lifestyle choice for you to make. It’s just you also love science a lot, and sciencing takes time.”

“Will you please stop treating my boyfriend like a piece of meat? And no more...what is that even?” Jane demanded, blushing. “Ass-grabbing? No more ass-grabbing pantomimes. His mother is visiting.” 

“Yeah, but she’s busy pestering Jan about the UN. And how much of a solid did Jones do you, telling her about that? I think she’s officially lost interest in quizzing you about Midgardian etiquette for a few days,” Darcy said. “We should probably have explained to Sif that some of that stuff is only considered acceptable on pub crawls and reality-tv, though.”

“I think that might have been a hard sell given how many of Thor’s friends do it constantly.” Jane pulled her hair back and reached for a rubber band.

“Jane Foster, don’t you dare!” Darcy snapped. “Honestly. Do you remember the last time I had to cut one of those out of your hair? I always have plenty of hair ties. Just _ask_.” She tossed her a large clip.

“Why didn’t you offer to explain the UN, anyway? You’re probably more current than Jan is.” Jane frowned and wrestled her hair into the clip. “And isn’t Jan supposed to be getting the budget revisions in to Hill by the end of the week? I distinctly remember that coming up the last time we had a girls’ night out.”

“Because I wanted to squee about the apple thing with you, and there’s something about the way Frigga smiles politely and nods when I talk that makes me think she doesn’t really get what I’m saying.”

“Maybe because you use academic buzzwords and say ‘you know?’ every third sentence?” Jane suggested. “Which is a habit you should try to break, by the way.”

“Which one?” Darcy asked, rooting through her purse. She pulled out a pack of gum. “Want a piece?”

“No, thanks.” Jane shook her head. “And both. One’s for an official audience, the other’s for your lay audience. You can’t combine the two without just making everything terrible for everyone.”

“Well, _fine_. Have a logical explanation for it. See if I care.” Darcy cracked her gum. “Think of it, though. You could do science forever. In two hundred years, you would _own_ science historians.”

“That’s actually not a comforting thought. Those people can be a little scary.”

“I have to assume at some point during that two hundred years, somebody would have taught you how to use a sword, so.” Darcy shrugged. “I bet you’d be able to take them.”

“Besides, I don’t think the apples are ‘forever.’ I think they’re more ‘for a really long time.’ And it’s not like I’d just get to do science and explore. Marrying Thor would come with a lot of diplomatic responsibilities, too. And, you know. I had to give away my houseplants because they were too much commitment.”

Darcy frowned. “I thought you just had cacti?”

“I _did_ just have cacti. I mean, yeah, this would be great. I love Thor. We could really have a future together if he wasn’t like a sequoia compared to us. But he’s not just some random Asgardian. He’s the crown prince, Darcy. I couldn’t just take off to study some new promising thing. I’d have some big responsibilities. If we had kids, they’d be raised with an eye on them assuming the throne.” Jane threw her hands up and sighed. “I’m so not ready for this.”

“Well, it’s a spare apple, isn’t it? You can always change your mind later if you decide it’s not working out for reasons that have nothing to do with Asgardians living a crazy-long time.” Darcy blew a bubble, her brows furrowing. “Besides, you might be overthinking the whole being responsible part. We know some really, really powerful people, and it hasn’t stopped them from just running off to do whatever they want, like, _ever_. Phil said Jones is personally responsible for several new volcanic islands, and you know, she doesn’t let that get in the way of being a hot mess. And didn’t Mr. Stark build that suit while he was drinking and refusing to see a therapist about his holy-crap PTSD? And then there’s all those general-guys and secret organizations that are always going ‘Hey, let’s capture the Hulk and bring him to a densely-populated area! That’s a great idea!’ Can you just imagine the budgets those guys have to devote to those operations? You don’t see them thinking it would be super-irresponsible, and they’re in positions of authority, so they should respect that and not do it.”

“While those are all great points, I think things might work a little differently on Asgard,” Jane said, putting her head in her hands. “They seem a lot more politically stable than we are.”

“Jane, they kicked out their only legitimate heir like two days after he was supposed to take over the whole place because he tried to re-start a MAD-scenario war, and then the usurper tried to assassinate like a dozen people because he was having an emotional breakdown.”

“And hypothesis retracted,” Jane said slowly, blinking. “You know, when you put it like that, it kind of seems like I couldn’t do much worse.”

“Just make sure you get a couple of Asgardian versions of Pepper on staff and a bunch more Sifs, and you should be okay. And maybe get everybody to cut back on the drinking before they make really important decisions.” 

“Or drink more. You drink enough, you don’t get anything done.” Jane looked thoughtful. She glanced down at her pocket and pulled out her phone. “Have we seen Phil lately?”

Darcy coughed. “Who’s asking?”

“Bruce.”

“Oh. In that case, yeah. Well, no, not seen him-seen him, but I know where he is. Maria said Nick was using him as a human shield against the textbook example of problem drinking, which I think translates into Director Fury and him being holed up in Director Fury’s office with a bottle of something really nice.”

Jane stared at her. “I’m not sure whether to be in awe of you just casually calling her ‘Maria’ like that or concerned that she just told you that all in passing.”

“I think she’s got a little app on her phone where she can have all of us extraordinary-renditioned just by pushing a button, so she feels more comfortable being all forthcoming like that,” Darcy explained. “She actually came and found me because she was hoping I could talk to you about the apple.”

“This was all a set-up?” Jane demanded, glaring at her. “Damn it, Darcy--”

“No! No, no. Totally not, I swear,” Darcy said quickly. “She wanted me to talk you _out_ of it. She also wants to like embargo the Bifrost and start making aliens come through customs. I mean ET-aliens, not like foreigner-aliens. We already make foreigner-aliens go through customs. I think the whole thing about kicking out Asgardians might be a little above our pay-grade, though, so I wasn’t really paying attention to that part.” She shrugged apologetically. “She was kind of mad about magic, too. She kept calling Jones ‘strange,’ which isn’t exactly the word I’d pick for somebody who filibusters a city council meeting about a backyard-chicken ordinance because it might be expanded to include ducks and then uses illusions to defeat the bailiffs when they try to eject her, but I’d sort of lost the whole thread of the conversation by then. Anyway, I think the apple’s a great idea, and Director Fury’s not drinking alone with Phil.”

“I’ll just let Bruce know Phil will get with him once he’s free,” Jane grumbled. “Hill seriously doesn’t want me doing this?”

“If it’s any comfort, now you’re rebelling against The Man,” Darcy said cheerfully.

Jane crossed her arms. “I’ve been rebelling against The Man since you were in elementary school.”

“So, what?” Darcy raised her eyebrows. “You were entering projects in the high school science fair that included chemicals or live animals without proper approval?”

“I’ll have you know my pigeon-guided rockets broke _both_ those rules,” Jane said firmly. “And I still should have won, but the judges had their noses buried too far in the regulation book to understand the significance of my findings.”

“What findings?” Tony asked, shouldering open the door. “Do we have findings? Are they awesome? Anybody want donuts?”

“It’s not your imagination, pigeons totally do it on purpose,” Jane explained, peeking into the box he held out. “Are these jelly or cream?”

“Either/or. Chocolate frosting is cream, powdered sugar’s raspberry jelly. You want one, Darth Lewis?”

“You only call me that when I’m in trouble,” Darcy pouted.

“Yeah, well, whatever you said to Hill’s got her on the warpath but good.” Tony flipped the box shut and shook his head.

“I didn’t say anything! She just sort of vented for a little bit, and I nodded and said ‘Uh-huh’ during the pauses! And you’ve got some in your beard.” She pointed to the left side of her mouth.

“Whatever you did, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be Dr. Strange right now. She actually asked me who pulls things out of a hat in this day and age, and I don’t think it was rhetorical.” He brushed at his face.

“Uh.” Darcy frowned. “Oh. Huh. Yeah, I think I might get where I went wrong, there. And you’ve still got just a bit. Down a little.”

“You gonna go fix it?” Tony asked, brushing the rest of the sugar out of his goatee.

“Hell no, I’m not wading back into it now.” Darcy looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “I’m sure Dr. Strange or whoever can take care of himself, and I don’t want to wind up in Gitmo.” She elbowed Jane. “Let’s go find Thor and get that apple eaten before Nick starts drunk-dialing world leaders and Maria figures out I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Wow. Seriously? First-name basis and everything?” Tony asked.

“You in?” Darcy demanded. “‘Cuz the train’s leaving the station.”

“Sure, why not? I’ve been on my best behavior the past twelve hours, I feel like I’ve earned a break or two,” Tony said, grinning.

“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” Jane asked, resigned.

“I’ve regretted all the best decisions I’ve ever made. Never listen to yourself,” Tony assured her. “Come on, let’s do whatever it is we’re doing.”


	74. Chapter 74

“If you pull yourself out of a goddamn hat in front of a bunch of civilians _one more time_ , I swear to God I will--”

“I believe you’re leaning on the intercom button, Agent Hill.”

“You’re damn right I’m leaning on the intercom button, you magic-slinging bastard! They’re going to hear this, and they’re going to remember it just in case they get any ideas about screwing around with thaumaturgic energy themselves!”

Phil stared at the speaker in the corner of his office and coughed. “Do you think we should intervene?”

“Which one you worried about?” Fury asked, pouring himself another drink.

The speaker erupted in blue sparks, and a shrill electronic screech echoed through the facility.

“I think at this point I’m worried about us,” Phil said. “I don’t suppose there’s a way to just issue a pro-forma reprimand to Strange about unnecessary involvement of civilians and call it a day?”

“Might’ve been before Hill worked herself into a mood about it. Then again, it was a pair of kids screwing around with a ten-dollar magic kit they picked up at the corner store, so...maybe not.” Fury grinned at him. “You remember why we got into this game in the first place, Coulson?”

“I don’t remember anything about yelling at magicians over minor bouts of public endangerment,” Phil said blandly. Fury topped him off, and he took a sip. “I seem to recall at the time we thought it was going to be more HYDRA-type threats. Small techno-cults like AIM, stateless terrorist fighters like the Ten Rings, Bill Gates run amok and stealing fifths of a penny from the stock market without anyone noticing….”

“We didn’t think it’d be happening at home.”

“We didn’t think it would be happening on this scale,” Phil sighed. “Unless that was just me assuming we’d have a few one-hit wonders to worry about while you were already imagining an army full of supersoldiers stomping around the parade grounds.”

Fury shrugged. “What one man can do, another man can do. The corollary being that once we know something can work, we know everybody who wants it bad enough is going to keep plugging away until they get it to work, too. How long was it from Stane getting that busted-ass pile of shit home from Afghanistan to him having a working fucking suit? A few weeks? A month? Even if he hadn’t decided to rip out Stark’s goddamn heart to power the thing, at most we’d have had three months between the idea getting field-tested and the reality stomping around Modesto during rush-hour.”

“Still. It’s not what we expected.” Phil shook his head.

“We knew it was always a possibility.”

“Then why did we allocate our resources primarily to deal with dirty bombs and suitcase nukes and infrastructure sabotage?” Phil snorted. “I know, you always had the Avengers Initiative on a back-burner somewhere. But that’s not what we had our eyes on.”

“We’re basically police, Coulson. You know that. What do the cops work hardest on, in terms of staff time? Breaking up penny-ante shit, or chasing down serial killers?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Phil looked at his glass, then looked at Fury, then looked at the ceiling. “Just out of curiosity, how much is left in that bottle?”

“Most of it, you light-weight,” Fury laughed. “Like the Avengers Initiative wasn’t mostly your idea.”

“Wait, is that the second bottle?” Phil demanded, angling his head so he could see around Fury to the desk. “What the hell, sir?”

“Coulson, do you have any idea how big a snit Hill’s been in the past few days?”

“Mm-hmm. I did suggest that there were some drawbacks to appointing a deputy director you’re afraid of, sir.”

“And they’re worth it. I will not have a second-in-command who doesn’t have the balls to take a swing at me if it’s necessary,” Fury sighed. “Even if that means I occasionally have to shanghai you for a few hours because I can’t make it past her to a decent bar like a normal human being.”

“And here I just thought you liked my company,” Phil groused.

“I like you when you’re being your normal accountant sourpuss self,” Fury said. “This mopey ‘what’s it all mean’ nonsense is what I’m less than fond of. Which would be fine, if it wasn’t part and parcel to you getting shitfaced.”

“I’ve occasionally been an angry drunk,” Phil protested. “That time in Burma, for one.”

“That time in Burma when the shots were laced with scorpion venom and speed? Because I’m pretty sure the speed was more to blame for Interpol not speaking to us for two months than the booze was.”

“Okay. That time in Switzerland.”

“You’re just using that as an example because you know I can’t remember it,” Fury snapped.

Phil grinned. “Trust me, I was a volcano of rage.”

“What, you slap a man for demanding to see your board pass?”

“I would never do something as unprofessional as that.” Phil sipped his drink. “I wrote a firm letter of complaint.”

Fury laughed and sank back into his chair. “Goddammit, Coulson.”

“We probably should do something about Strange and Hill, though. And I promised to get back to Thor about that paperwork he filled out. And somebody--preferably neither of us--needs to coach Selvig on selling immortality.”

“And I can promise you not a single one of those things is going to go better drunk,” Fury said, settling in. “So we’ve got at least a few hours to kill.”

“If you’re about to suggest poker, I think we both know that’s going to end badly,” Phil told him.

“But it’s a fun sort of badly.” Fury chuckled to himself and raised his glass.

“Well.” Phil studied his glass. “You do have a valid argument, there.”

*****

“Should we go do something about that?” Jane asked, staring at the fried speakers.

“Do you _want_ to?” Darcy retorted.

“Um, not really.”

“Do you have any idea of where to start doing something about it? Because I have to tell you, I don’t. And Jones isn’t answering her phone, so that’s it for wizards I’m willing to talk to.” Tony paused. “Unless you think I could derail this by calling Strange and asking him for a quick consult on what to do about him arguing with Agent Hill?”

“I...you know, I don’t think it could hurt?” Jane said slowly. “Obfuscation and distraction _are_ incredibly efficient tactics.”

“And if it doesn’t work, we can hang up and run away,” Darcy pointed out, nodding.

“Well, there we go,” Tony said brightly.

“Oh! Ask him if he knows if I have to eat the whole apple, or if it still works if you split it,” Jane said.

“Why would you split it?” Tony asked, his brows furrowing. “It’s immortality. Or did I misunderstand the whole point of this?”

“A couple centuries is still a really long time, and--”

“No, no, forget I asked.” Tony held up a hand. “I don’t need to know why right now. We need to think like Pepper and prioritize. Bullet-points, action plans, agenda items. We can have that discussion _after_ we get the answer, and conceivably prevent the whole base from being spat out a baggage claim in Newark.”

“What?” Darcy asked, staring at him.

“I don’t know. As I understand it, it’s just what magicians do when they get pissed off at things.” Tony shrugged. “I mean, think about it. It would be a really unpleasant thing to have happen, right? So, I’m dialing, you’re both being quiet, and hopefully that doesn’t happen.” 

He shot them both a huge grin and made shushing motions. Darcy crossed her arms and scowled at him, and Jane grabbed a pen and and notepad.

“What are you doing?” Darcy asked.

“Taking notes. You know, writing it down? We need data here, Darcy,” Jane sighed.

“Hey, Chatty Cathies. Shh,” Tony hissed. “Dr. Strange? Hi, yes, hello! This is Tony Stark. Remember me? Yeah, we’ve worked together a few times in the past. Yes, and we had lunch together last week. Yes, and I was just on that panel with you. Well, actually, the birthday present was more Pepper than me. I have terrible taste in gifts. You’d understand if I’d ever gotten you anything myself. Fury threatened to get a restraining order against me last Christmas over it. I was wondering if you had a moment to walk me through a problem? Yeah. Rogue magician in SHIELD headquarters, as it so happens. I absolutely agree that it could be tricky. I’m pouring myself a drink and settling in right this second. What? Come on, Strange, loosen up. It’s five o’clock somewhere.”

Tony gave them a thumbs up, and Darcy managed to look a little impressed.

“So, as I was saying. Rogue magician in SHIELD headquarters...”


	75. Chapter 75

“Ms. Jones, we must speak.”

“Strange, did you just climb out of my hallway mirror?” Lucy sighed, flipping through a stack of photographs.

“It was a convenient method of transportation, and time is of the essence,” he snapped, straightening his jacket. “Those mortals you’ve adopted--”

“A, since when are you _not_ mortal, and B, I haven’t adopted anybody, and C, I’m not discussing anything with you until you go back out and ring the doorbell like somebody who wasn’t raised in a barn.”

Strange scowled at her, then frowned. “What in the name of the gods are you working on, Jones?”

“Working on?” she asked blankly. She glanced at the pair of pistols and the ski mask sitting on the table. “Oh, that? I’m going to rob a bank later.”

“No, _that_.” He gestured at the pictures papering the walls. “What sort of monstrosity are you planning to conjure now?”

“Dude, those are just geese bills. And what I’m planning to do is prevent them from taking over the subdivision, one house at a time. Everybody thinks I’m nuts, getting so worked up about this duck thing, but they’ll be sorry once the geese get their beaks in the door. Just you wait and see,” she growled.

“Dare I ask where does the bank robbery fits into this heroic plan of yours?”

“It doesn’t. That, I’m just doing for kicks. Old times’ sake. You know, because it’s fun. And also, I’m kind of broke.”

“You are far and away the worst magician I have ever met.”

Lucy looked up from the photos. “Did you actually want a real thing that I can or will actually do? Because if not, seriously. Fuck off. And take him with you.”

She waved over her shoulder to where Rabbit lay sleeping in a patch of sunlight.

Strange drew himself up. “As I was saying, the mortals you’ve adopted--”

“The ones I don’t really like and have been avoiding calls from since this stupidity started and definitely have not adopted?”

“The mortals you’ve permitted to become your problem, then,” he said sullenly.

“Permitted nothing. You want them reined in, you do it,” she grunted.

“They’ve somehow obtained one of the Apples of Idunn, and they plan to use it!”

“So, people I don’t care about doing things I don’t fully see the problem with courtesy of Asgardian nonsense.” Lucy nodded to herself. “Did I hear wrong, or did you declare yourself Sorcerer Supreme of the entire planet a couple years ago? Making this way more your mess than mine, even assuming I did give a rat’s ass about it.”

Strange crossed his arms. “Well, I’m delegating.”

“Too bad for you that you’re not actually the boss of me,” she said cheerfully.

“As a magician, it is your duty to prevent this. It’s a disaster in the making.” Strange pursed his lips. “And why on earth would you need me to remove this minor anthropomorphization? He is but a small nature spirit.”

“Because it turns out to be ridiculously difficult to evict squatters from property that doesn’t technically exist,” Lucy sighed. “How exactly is this a disaster? What does that stupid apple even do? Turn somebody into a god?”

“It grants a youth of ages! The entire natural order will be subverted!”

“Says the dude who just crawled out of my goddamn mirror like an urban legend because he was too cheap to buy a plane ticket, without the slightest trace of irony,” Lucy muttered. “You do realize we’re in the business of subverting the entire natural order, right, Saruman?”

“Saruman was evil,” Strange snapped.

“No way. He’s the head of the council. You’re thinking of Sauron. I said ‘Saruman’.”

Strange tilted his head. “I’ll do us both the favor of assuming you haven’t read the books and simply ask if you were high while you watched the movies.”

“No, I was not high when I watched either _Hobbit_. Back me up here, bunny.”

“We totally weren’t high when we watched the _Hobbit_ , Nacho Supreme.”

“How terribly mature,” Strange said acidly. “And of course they still think he’s good in _The Hobbit_. The revelation of his terrible betrayal comes in _The Two Towers_.”

“Spoilers much?” Lucy asked.

“You are not allowed to complain about spoilers in the case of a film released a decade ago, based on books released prior to the inauspicious occasion of your birth,” he hissed.

“Wait, does one of them using the apple make _everybody_ young and, uh, immortal? Did I understand that complaint of yours correctly? Or does it just make the person who uses it young and immortal? I mean, they’re not pulling a repeat of that jerkoff Sterns’s plot to like, irradiate everybody and ‘perfect’ the planet, right?”

Strange paused. “Sterns?”

“Sort of green, really smart, can’t go more than five seconds without a rant on the superiority of the ‘children of the gamma ray,’” she made little quotation marks with her fingers and rolled her eyes, “ _really huge fucking head_? You cannot tell me you haven’t met this guy.”

“As someone who is far more akin to Gandalf than Saruman, I try to avoid running in the same social circles as supervillains,” Strange informed her.

“I didn’t meet him at a fucking party, Strange. For one, I don’t think he goes to parties. He seems like kind of a buzzkill. For another, the parties I go to, he wouldn’t get invited to. Because buzzkill.” Lucy tossed her pictures onto the coffee table. “I ran into him when I was on a take-out run, while he was trying to irradiate everything.”

“And you stopped him?”

“Meh. I’m pretty sure whoever was working on had it in hand. And you gotta admit, everybody being irradiated would make for an interesting life.”

“Truly, you commitment to humanity is thrilling to behold,” Strange said drily.

“You say that like I’m the one who was trying to turn everyone into atomic monsters,” she snorted. “Anyway, which is it? They’re just becoming immortal, or everybody’s getting turned into a baby?”

“They are trying to confer immortality upon themselves. Specifically, I believe Jane Foster is reaching for the lifespan of a god.” He flung his cape back and gestured grandly at the mirror. “We must away!”

Lucy sighed. “All right, one more time. The problem with this is _what_ , exactly?”

“It subverts the--”

“The _actual_ problem? And not the one we cause routinely just because our hot pockets have heated up unevenly?”

“Have I mentioned that your practice of magic is irresponsible and petty?”

“Have I mentioned that you’re a huge dick? Or that there is literally zero point to wearing a nice suit if you’re just going to drape a swoopy vampire cape over it like an unbelievable douchebag?”

“My fashion choices are none of your concern,” he said coldly.

“Your fashion choices are the concern of everybody with eyes. Unlike one person becoming forever young, which doesn’t seem like anyone’s concern except for nosey parkers who apparently don’t have enough to deal with and have to go looking for--”

“I’ll have you know that SHIELD called _me_.”

“About this, or about that thing with the ruined children’s birthday party? Because between the two, and this is just a guess born out of a long history of getting bitched out by SHIELD, my money’s on the latter.”

“You heard about that?”

“Bro, that made CNN. Who usually won’t run _Weekly World News_ shit like that, but I guess there you go.” She shrugged. “Maybe it has something to do with that time you hypnotized one of their anchorwomen’s husbands into not doing that segment on you, only they were broadcasting live when you did it, so everybody still found out about it.”

“That was a...slight miscalculation. I was very busy at the time. I needed civilians to clear the area at once,” he said defensively.

“Yeah, no. I totally get it. I may have projected illusory War-of-the-Worlds Martian walkers to get people to evacuate before a brawl went down.” 

“I don’t believe I read the report on that incident.”

“Turns out nobody’s read War of the Worlds, so it didn’t really work. I probably should have gone with zombies or Godzilla or something. But the point remains, I completely do not blame you for that one.” She cracked her knuckles. “Can’t really say the same for Ms. Winston-Smythe, though.”

“You’re genuinely not going to assist me in preventing this.”

“Nope.”

“Worst magician I have ever met,” he muttered, sweeping his cape around him. He stepped back through the mirror.

“Who the fuck was that?” Rabbit asked.

“Stephen Strange, aka the Sorcerer Supreme, aka Dapper Dracula.”

“Well, I didn’t vote for him.”

“I don’t think you vote for sorcerers supreme,” Lucy said, stretching. “I think it’s the sort of thing you just make sound like a big deal in the hopes that some poor sap with more control issues than brains will step up and take over so nobody else has to bother with it.”

“You gonna go see what all the fuss is about?”

“Am I gonna…? Fuck no, Rabbit. Did any of that sound like it really needed to be dealt with?”

“Wasn’t really paying attention, Lucha.”

“Well, the too-long-didn’t-read version is that I don’t think this is a problem, and, if it is, it sure isn’t _my_ problem. This is, in fact, the exact sort of thing I would like to steer clear of, just in case the Asgardians turn out to have memories like immortal, super-powered goldfish, and if I can just stay out of sight for a few months, they’ll forget about me. Not to mention, this is the sort of intra-family drama that should bump me off their radar until the dust settles, no matter what.”

“So you’re totally free for a beer run?” he asked.

“Busy, Rabbit. Robbin’ a bank.”

“Well, just stop by a QuikChek on your way back. Bing, bang, boom.”

Lucy considered it. “Sure, why the fuck not? Not like anything else is on deck for the rest of the night.”


	76. Chapter 76

“Hey, Rabbit, everything’s all fucked up,” Lucy called from the hallway. She tossed her keys and wallet into a bowl by the door and readjusted her grip on the case of beer under her arm. “And I got your beer.”

She kicked off her sandals and padded into the deserted living room. A note hastily scribbled on the back of an envelope had been stuck to the fridge at knee level.

“‘It’s been fun, but I’ve got errands to run’? Well, fuck you, too, bunny.”

She dropped the case on the counter and flopped on the couch. The bank robbery had somehow wound up involving negotiating with the teller, which was humiliating enough, but then on top of that the police hadn’t even bothered showing up once they’d heard her name. The entire thing had been one long breach of the social contract.

Lucy dug around in the cushions until she found the remote control and a bottle of rum. At least, she was sure, the news would have something entertaining. The local anchors could make a town-eating sinkhole out of a mole-cricket burrow. There would probably be an artist’s rendition of her with a machine gun having a climactic shootout with police.

“--public disturbance by local ‘supervillain’ Lucy Jones--”

“Seriously, lady? With the air-quotes and everything?” Lucy stared at the screen, her lips twisting. 

“The mayor’s office could not be reached for comment at this time, but the sheriff’s office released the following statement.”

She watched as the set cut away to a bored-looking deputy she recognized from previous PR sessions read off a pair of notecards.

“We at the sheriff’s office do of course take all crime seriously, especially that which may involve a powered individual, but we also caution the public against assigning any greater weight to these events than they merit--”

Lucy turned off the tv, threw the remote at the recliner, and groaned. That was the exact same canned statement they’d released the last time she’d done something. She considered writing a letter to the editor explaining that they’d rue the day they failed to take her seriously, but the last time she’d done that it had been run opposite a rehash of the Christmas drone incident, under the headline “Local Vandal Claims to Commit ‘Serious Crimes,’ Be ‘Actual Threat’”, and above a copy of Doom’s address to the UN from earlier in the week. She had, of course, burned down the paper’s offices in response, but she no longer had any confidence in that prompting a more serious consideration of her record this time.

“I swear to fucking god, I’m going to give everyone in this town tinnitus for the weekend.” She glared at the rum bottle. “Well, you’re probably not going to help anything, are you?”

Lucy tossed it after the remote and sighed. A vague sense of guilt nagged at her, and she wondered if she should call Jane. It was probably at least somewhat her fault that whatever was happening was happening in the first place, and she did rather like the woman. And Strange, smug prick that he was, probably wouldn’t find out about it. She saw practically no chance of Thor not finding out about it, though, and she could see the downhill slide from there. Lucy put her feet up on the coffee table and closed her eyes. There had been a point when her life had not been an utter shitshow. She was sure of that much. She just couldn’t remember when it had been.

Definitely before Thor had shown up. Probably before she’d met Coulson. She eyed the bottle from across the room. It probably wouldn’t help, but what could it hurt?

*****

“Hey, Wasp, you got a second?” Lucy asked. She leaned against the interior of the phone booth and watched another fire truck roll past.

“This is Hank. Who’s this?”

“Jones. Put Wasp on, would you?”

“Jones? Why are _you_ calling?”

“Because I want to talk to somebody who’s not going to narc me out to Thor.”

“And that somebody’s Jan?”

“Or something.” Lucy picked her teeth and waited until the next fire truck’s sirens had faded. “So put her on, would you?”

“What the hell is even going on where you are?” he demanded.

“Some shit’s on fire. In completely unrelated news, the prices of molotov cocktails these days are going to put somebody out of business, I swear.”

“You set a fire? Why?”

“Pride. Boredom. It’s what I do.”

“Those are terrible reasons,” Hank scolded.

“Ehn. At least it’s not filthy lucre? Seriously, though, I would like to talk to van Dyne.”

“Well, she’s kind of busy, and I’m pretty sure she’d tell Thor that you called, so this was a bad idea on your part,” Hank said.

“Well, fuck.” Lucy gritted her teeth. She didn’t know anyone else who might even consider not ratting her out to Thor, and she wasn’t feeling _that_ guilty.

He paused. “Unless it’s about this thing with Jane?”

“What else would it be about?”

“Um. The fire you started? Is that _another_ round of emergency response vehicles?”

“It’s the same engines as last time. The 911 dispatchers around here are just, you know, really fucking terrible. And also I jammed the trucks’ GPS devices.”

“You are a terrible human being, and I genuinely pity Thor for having gotten involved with you,” Hank sighed.

“Says the guy who’s going to cheat on his wife with his archnemesis.”

“I-- _what_?”

“What, what?”

“I don’t have an archnemesis, and I would never cheat on Jan.”

“Gift of prophecy, bro,” Lucy said, brushing a smear of ash off her clothes.

“Well, your prophecy is wrong. Wait, was that even a prophecy? Are you just trying to psych me out now?” Hank asked.

“Why would I do something like that?”

“Terrible person,” he reminded her.

“Yeah, well. I _may_ just be fucking with you. Or maybe your fate is changeable. Who knows?” She waved her hands for good measure, then flipped off the pedestrians who gave her strange looks.

“Supposedly you,” he grunted. “Is this about Strange, then? Because Agent Hill was about ready to kill him before he took off.”

“Why don’t you put Wasp on the line? We can get all this straightened out and then never speak to each other again.”

“Maybe I should just take a message.”

“You’re useless.” Lucy rolled her eyes. “Don’t make me come up there. Nobody wants that.”

Hank heaved a sigh. “None of our other villains are nearly this much trouble. You know that? I honestly don’t understand how you are this big a pain in the ass. You don’t even usually do anything except putter around getting high.”

“I do lots of stuff, Hank,” she snapped. “I’m a well-respected member of the supervillain community, and they will all rue the day they failed to acknowledge that fact.”

“Um. You are aware of the definition of ‘community,’ right?” he asked. “And ‘well-respected’?”

“Oh, shut up. And Doom’s got to make me seem like a good neighbor. How many of you idiots have wound up having one-night stands with doombots just because he had some spare inventory to cycle out before the next upgrade?” Lucy demanded. “I would never do something like that.”

“What? Oh, _God_. That explains _so much_ about last summer. Doom really…? Just for the love of...goddammit. Don’t think that lets you off the hook. ‘Not as bad as Doom’ is a meaningless rubric, and you know it. The man’s an amoral lunatic with more money than he knows what to do with, an infinite amount of free time, and a country of brainwashed footsoldiers. The only people currently running around who are worse than Doom are _literally Nazis_.”

Lucy cleared her throat and frowned at the phone. “Uh, well. There you go, I guess. I’m definitely not a Nazi. Wait, is this about the time I finished the milk and put the carton back in the fridge? Because I was high as a fucking kite, and it is a matter of record that me being that way was not my fault.”

“Just the one time?”

“Why are you even asking me that? Of course just the one time.” She stopped. “Wait, just the one time I didn’t mean to be high, or just the one time with the milk carton? Because the former has been happening with some regularity lately, but the latter only happened the once.”

“Has it occurred to you that this entire conversation is a sign that you should maybe, I don’t know, get some help?” Hank asked after a long pause.

“Says the man who needed a ratchet set to pry a doombot off his dick.”

“That was Tony, and also I’m not dignifying that with a response.” Hank coughed. “Seriously, though.”

“Seriously, put Janet on and we can forget we had this entire conversation. Because I really don’t need to know which one of you is a big enough jerk to keep sneaking empty jugs back into the fridge when you can just order groceries online. That’s just beyond. And I say this as someone whose plans for the afternoon involve dancing on the ruins of my enemies’ soundstage.” Lucy carded her fingers through her hair and shook her head. As useful as it was to know that Avengers morale could be undermined with a few well-timed communal-refrigerator incidents, she could experiment with that later.

“Jan’s kind of...unavailable right now.”

“Fucking _seriously_ , Pym?”

“Yes.”

“You couldn’t have said that five fucking minutes ago?” she groaned. “You suck so goddamned much sometimes.”

“Well, we needed some time to trace your call,” he confessed.

“Trace my…?” Lucy stared at the phone and smacked her forehead into the plexiglass. “Motherfucker, just punch my goddamned name and ‘fire’ into Google fucking News. _You can hear the fucking sirens_. Why do you idiots have to make everything so fucking hard all the time?”

“Oh. Yes. That might have been easier.”

She hung up more viciously than was strictly necessary and shook her head. “Assholes.”

Why were they even bothering to trace her call? It didn’t sound like they had anyone to spare to send after her, and it wasn’t like she’d done anything worthy of Avengers-level intervention. If Strange hadn’t tried hauling her back to wherever Foster had set up camp, the odds of anyone else giving a damn were minimal. The phone rang. Lucy sighed and picked it up.

“Asshole.”

“Be nice, Jones.” The voice on the other end was slightly slurred.

“Coulson? Are you _drunk_?”

“We may need an extraction.”

“An extraction,” she repeated, her brows furrowing. “Who’s ‘we’? And from what?”

“Director Fury and I may have made a slight miscalculation about how advisable it was to hide in his office.”

“So ‘we’ involves the head of SHIELD.” Lucy pinched the bridge of her nose. “Okay, first, I am a supervillain. Pym can probably give you an update on that if you’ve forgotten. And second, don’t you guys have strike-teams and shit for that?”

“We’re hiding from Hill,” Phil said slowly, as if he were explaining a very obvious fact to a very dim child.

“Is there something about Hill that I don’t know? Because between you two and Strange, I’m thinking somebody should be at hand who isn’t terrified of her.”

“Have you _met_ her?”

“Yes. Yes, I have. Question retracted. I’m still not real clear on why you’re calling me, though.” Lucy waved as one of the fire engines sped past for the third time. The driver scowled at her.

“Well. You know. Magic.” Phil sighed. “And I miss you.”

“Oh, goddamn it, Coulson. I thought we had a deal. No calling during the maudlin phase.”

“I don’t remember having a conversation to that effect,” he said. She could practically hear him concentrating on pronouncing the words right.

“Well, no. We didn’t. I just thought we kind of had an unspoken arrangement. You know, an understanding.”

“Just get over here and get us off this ledge.”

“You’re on a ledge? I thought you were in Fury’s office.”

“No, we _were_. And then obviously we couldn’t _stay_ there, because everybody knew where we were.”

“So you’re…?”

“On a ledge,” he supplied.

“On a ledge.”

“Yes.”

“I hate you so much sometimes. You understand that, right? I am going to be a laughingstock for this. And between my hatred for you, and my hatred of being a laughingstock, I am going to be an _incredibly_ angry phoenix rising from the ashes to smash the world and--”

“Could you grab a pizza on your way? We’re starving.”

Lucy closed her eyes and puffed out her cheeks. The point at which her life had not been an utter shitshow had definitely before she’d met Coulson.


	77. Chapter 77

“Shit, it’s Hill. She’s found us.” Phil crouched under the table and looked around wildly. “Do we still have those cyanide capsules?”

“Those haven’t been part of the standard kit for...ever. We’ve never had those,” Fury said slowly, frowning. “You only get those for special occasions.”

“Nick, we’re too plastered to go over the railing and through the window below us, and we’re hiding under a table with a frosted glass top. I think this is a special occasion.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t when we started this, so unless you’ve got a time machine…”

Phil’s brows furrowed. “Do I?”

“I think if you have to ask me that, you probably don’t. Or,” Nick muttered, “you definitely shouldn’t be operating it. One or the other.”

“But if we checked each other’s work--”

The door to the balcony slid open so hard it bounced off its tracks.

“ _You pair of absolute dicks_.” 

Fury and Coulson glanced at each other, then at her, and then back at each other.

“I was just following orders--”

“This was all Phil’s idea--”

“Quiet, the both of you! I cannot even begin to tell you how much I do not care whose fault this is. And? This?” She gestured at the patio furniture, awnings, and railing. “This is not a ‘ledge,’ Coulson. This is a fucking balcony. A fucking balcony that is bigger than your average New York apartment. There is precisely zero chance of you falling off of this without you trying real hard to win one for the Gipper.”

“Jones?” Phil asked, tilting his head.

The illusion rippled and vanished, and Lucy glared at him. “Let me guess, you don’t even remember calling me.”

“No, I remember. I just didn’t expect you to come.”

“Or to have the balls to walk around pretending to be Hill if you did show,” Fury added.

“The sort of day I’m having, it was either this or drop Godzilla on a major city.” Lucy wound her hair into a loose bun. “Speaking of which, why is it that I’ve actually got a bad temper and a record of setting people on fire, but they’re twice as afraid of her?”

It had been more than a little gratifying to have low-level agents and office workers scattering like cockroaches in bright light just from one look at her face. That it was due to them mistaking her for someone else could be overlooked for the moment.

“That’s classified,” Phil sighed. “And you’ve never set anyone on fire.”

“That’s not what your file on me says,” she pointed out.

“We don’t have a file on you, because our file on you disappeared under mysterious circumstances,” Fury grunted. 

“You totally have a file on me, and it totally says I set people on fire. And stole the entire city of Rio de Janeiro one time. I also punched out the Hulk, flew to the moon, and am secretly Carmen Sandiego.”

Phil blinked at her. “Jones, I realize that I am exceptionally drunk right now.”

“Yes. Yes, you are,” she agreed.

“But did you make yourself a new file filled with gross inaccuracies? Because it sounds like you made yourself a new file filled with gross inaccuracies.”

“I may have been exceptionally bored, and you know I make bad life choices.” Lucy gave them both a bright smile. “Hence the fact that I’m here, not-rescuing a pair of idiots for not even the ability to needle you about it in the future.”

“I can’t believe I let you call her,” Fury said.

“You didn’t let me, you told me to,” Phil protested. “I wanted to call Jan, and you said don’t interrupt her baby shower--”

“Holy shit, Wasp is pregnant?” Lucy asked.

“What? Is she?” Phil rubbed his eyes. “Christ. We’re going to be a team-leader short?”

“The baby shower she organized,” Fury clarified. “For one of her non-superhero, nothing-to-do-with-us friends.”

“Wasp has non-superhero friends? Since when?” Lucy asked.

“Since forever? Why does that surprise you?” Phil squinted at her. “You’ve got non-supervillain friends. I’ve got friends who aren’t in SHIELD.”

Fury snorted. “You’ve got friends everywhere. Can’t swing a dead cat without hitting some asshole you went to school with or know from way back or dated for a few weeks before an amicable break-up. It’s actually kind of bizarre. And that is a weird expression. Was swinging dead cats ever a thing? Who would do that?”

Lucy looked behind her, then back at him. “Are you really asking _me_ that? How the fuck would I know? I graduated valedictorian from a school that taught flat-earth creationism. Twice.”

“Twice?”

“Well, they revoked my degree after I accidentally saw a few seconds of a _Nova_ episode, so I had to re-take a year,” she deadpanned. “It’s all in my file.”

“Really?”

“You two are so unbelievably drunk. You know that, right?” she groaned. “I’m not going to have to talk you out of trying to drive places or call your ex-girlfriends?”

“Man, I really do miss--”

“Nope,” Lucy snapped. “Shut it down.”

“It’s not just the booze. He turns mopey every time he hears a cello,” Fury told her. “You should let him call her.”

“This is why they invented phone locks. To keep people too drunk to operate them from making terrible, terrible decisions,” Lucy said, nudging the empty bottle with the toe of her sandal. They’d at least gotten drunk on the good stuff.

“That’s only part of the reason they invented those,” Fury muttered. 

Phil leaned against him. “We should go to Seattle.”

Fury glanced at him. “What’s in Seattle?”

“My heart,” he sighed.

“Walked right into that one,” she grunted.

“Portland, you drunk bastard. She lives in Portland.”

“But she’s in Seattle right now,” Phil explained. “She’s a visiting performer with one of the orchestras there. It’s a really great opportunity. I’m very excited for her.”

“What have I told you about wiretapping for personal reasons?”

“Seriously, Coulson. Dick move.”

“I _wouldn’t_ ,” he told Fury. He looked at Lucy and shook his head. “And you’ve got,” he waved his hands vaguely, “so little room to talk it’s not even funny. She posted it on Facebook.”

“Which you still have access to because…?” Lucy asked.

“Because I’m a responsible adult and didn’t get unfriended just because the long-distance thing didn’t work out?”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded. They stared at her. “What? I’m totally a responsible adult.”

“Is this even really happening?” Fury asked, elbowing Phil. “I’m awake, right? We didn’t get hit with laughing gas while we were drinking?”

“Jones, when you get dumped because you make the six o’clock news for turning everyone’s cars into icecream sculptures--”

“That was _one_ time--”

“--and your girlfriend didn’t even know you had superpowers--”

“I totally told her that!”

“--let alone that you use them for _evil_ , you’re...where was I going with this?”

“Right over the edge of a balcony,” Lucy said sourly.

“Oh, right. You tend to become persona non grata in your ex’s life. You’re like that person they dated who happened to be right out of rehab when they met and then falls off the wagon in a spectacular fashion.”

“You cut somebody off over that? Really?” she asked.

“Technically, I cut her off over setting my apartment on fire to get rid of bugs only she could see,” Phil said.

“Okay, yes, that seems like a good idea.” Lucy paused. “Assuming it wasn’t weird, trans-dimensional bullshit, anyway.”

“Nope. Just speed and magic mushrooms.”

She stared at him for a few seconds, trying to work out the exact logistics of someone thinking that combination would be a good idea. “Why would you even--”

“ _I don’t know_ ,” Phil told her firmly.

“I’m still hungry,” Fury announced.

“Okay?”

“And I don’t see a pizza,” he continued.

“Oh, screw you guys.”

“You know, now that you mention it, I’m still starving, too,” Phil said, nodding. “But you know what? We should go get breakfast.”

“It’s like, dinner time, guys.”

“Yeah, but now I really want pancakes.”

“And this is America,” Fury added, “and not communist Russia. So even though it is dinner time, I’m pretty sure we can still find a place that will serve us breakfast.”

“Communist Russia isn’t communist Russia. And I don’t think that’s how we actually defined it when it was. _And_ I don’t like you, _and_ am still angry with you for having called me all the way up here when there was absolutely no reason.”

“We needed you to save us from ourselves?” Phil offered.

“Please do not use lines you picked up from your addict ex-girlfriend unless you’re a hundred percent comfortable with me trying them out on the Asgardians in the future,” Lucy warned him.

“You got to pretend to be Hill,” Fury pointed out. “I think you’re coming out ahead of the game here.”

“Seriously,” Phil said. “I’d forgotten you could even do that. If I could do that, I’d never stop pretending to be other people. I’d never wait in line again.”

“You _don’t_ wait in line,” Lucy said, rolling her eyes. “You’re a spook with a jerkoff, no-line-waiting government agency that fires missiles at its enemies and blames the CIA. You two are such assholes, I swear to god.”

“If you get us someplace that will feed us pancakes within the next half-hour, I will strongly consider forgetting about the time you said my mother was bad at operational security,” Fury said.

“I said that?”

“You did.”

“I don’t think I said that,” Lucy said quickly. “My file doesn’t say I said that.”

“Your file’s not worth the time it took you to gin it up.”

“It also doesn’t sound like something I’d say. Your mother was a saint.”

Fury glared at her. 

“Your mother wasn’t a saint? I’m really not sure why that’s getting me that look.”

Lucy chewed her lip. It did actually sound like something she’d say. She just couldn’t remember a point when she’d been feeling good enough that she’d said it about Nick fucking Fury’s mother someplace he could conceivably find out she’d said it.

“And I just want you to know that I’m pretty sure whoever told you that is a damn liar.”

“You said it to my face.”

“I...wow. How drunk was I?”

“Stone cold sober.”

“Well, that explains that, then. I’m not myself when I’m sober. I get mean, start saying things I’d never say otherwise. It’s a terrible affliction. I’ve tried getting help, but you know. Every so often you wind up in a dry county, or local blue laws prevent the sale of liquor before noon on Sundays, or you accidentally went to Utah, and there’s no help for it.”

“You know that saying? When you’re in a hole, stop digging?” Fury asked.

“Yeah?”

“Put the shovel down, Jones,” Phil said.

“Fine,” she sighed. “Pancakes it is.”


	78. Chapter 78

Jan glowered at her phone, then sighed before answering the call. “This had better be very important, Hank.”

“Um.”

“Because I really don’t want to miss half the very expensive party I arranged for my very oldest friend, who’s about to have her very first child, that she’s been trying to conceive for a very long time, unless it’s, you know, very important.”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” he hedged, “and I’m not calling to ask you to bail. I just wanted to let you know the details, in case you do. Have to bail, I mean. If that’s okay.”

She shook her head at the worried looks she was getting from some of the other guests and gave them a cheerful smile that faded as soon as she was in the kitchen.

“Lay it on me.”

“Jane, Tony, and Darcy are screwing around with that apple that the talking head gave to Jones to give to Thor. Dr. Strange is very upset with them, and Maria’s very upset with Dr. Strange, Phil, and Director Fury. And then Dr. Strange disappeared, and I got a weird phone call from Jones, about Dr. Strange, and possibly the apple, and then maybe a half-hour later, Hill was frog-marching Phil and Fury out of the building and threatening to have them both shot if they didn’t shut up and get in the car. I think she may have just kind of turned evil, and I’d be telling this to Tony, but now I can’t find any of _them_ , and also I think we might all need to get tested for robot-syphilis.”

Jan pursed her lips and tried to formulate a response that didn’t involve changing her name and joining the Peace Corps. “Hank?”

“Yeah?”

“Why don’t you go find Steve, and tell him all this?”

“Because he’s still in the Arctic. Remember, that weird talking ice-pool thing?”

“Clint and Natasha?”

“Are already trying to run down Tony, Darcy, and Jane.”

“Thor?”

“Not answering his phone.”

“Bruce?”

“This really doesn’t seem like a Hulk-friendly event.”

“Robot-syphilis?” 

The server who’d just walked through the kitchen door turned around and walked right back out without registering that she’d heard the phrase.

“I’d really rather not discuss that one over the phone.”

Jan took a deep breath. “Hank. You are an adult. You are a superhero. I have faith in you. You can handle this.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Then I guess we’ll find out if Jones and Tony are onto something when they get loaded before a fight.”

“Seriously, Jan?” he groaned.

“Don’t seriously me. I did not hire a sommelier specifically to put together a wine-and-cheese menu that a pregnant woman could participate in just so that I could walk out halfway through her presentation. Not to mention that everyone you just rattled off is also a superhero, and also an adult, and I have some reasonable expectation that they can take care of themselves without doing anything too horrible.”

“I don’t think Darcy--”

“She’s practically The Amazing Taser at this point, Hank. She electrocuted an entire squad of hostile drones just last week. She counts.”

“But Phil--”

“Paperwork Man.”

“That’s not really a thing,” Hank pointed out. Jan sighed.

“Look, given the frankly unhealthy paternal relationship he’s developed with Jones over the years, do you think she’s going to let anything happen to him?” she asked. “Anything serious, I mean? She brought him back from the dead.”

“She brought him back from the dead because she happened to be on the way,” he reminded her. “You have a lot higher expectations of her than I do. Especially after the last conversation I had with her. She set a news studio on fire and then deliberately misrouted the fire trucks.”

Jan waited for a moment, then cleared her throat.

“ _You_ didn’t interfere with emergency responders,” Hank said quickly. “And I’m sure this set of anchors didn’t actually have it coming.”

“The twenty-four-hour news-cycle hasn’t left many anchors in the civilian category, Hank,” she gritted. “Now. I am going back to the party. Do your best.”

“I’m going to die.”

“You’re not going to die.”

“I’m going to get beaten up by Hill.”

“That might happen,” she conceded. “Wear your heavier armor. I love you, and just remember, you have velvet ants in Lab Two.”

“I _do_ have velvet ants in Lab Two,” he said, brightening considerably. “I love you, too. Enjoy your party. I’ll call when I’ve got everything wrapped up.”

Jan hung up and put her phone back in her pocket. She kneaded her temples a little, took a deep breath, and went back to the living room.

“Sorry, everyone. False alarm!” she chirped. “Where are we at on the list?”

*****

“I’m still not sure I’m cool with animal experimentation,” Darcy grumbled, crossing her arms.

“Darcy, she’s _ancient_ for a rat,” Jane sighed. “This is as much for her benefit as for ours.”

“Hate to say it, but I’m with the Shocker,” Tony said. “I mean, we’ve all seen _The Secret of NIMH_ , right?”

“Indeed, friend Tony, I have not,” Thor said.

“And stop calling me that. I mean, it’s already some guy’s villain-name, which I can’t actually bring myself to believe, and also? _Gross_.”

“How is it gross?” Tony protested.

“All that hardware in your pocket, and you can’t look a word up on Urban Dictionary yourself?” Darcy muttered.

“Wait, really?” He glanced at Thor, who shrugged. “Shocker’s name is a sex thing?”

“I know not of which she speaks, but I have found that she is usually most reliable in these matters.”

“Well, not to go there, but I’m guessing most middle-aged men who chase teenagers in revealing costumes around town on the reg aren’t exactly the most upstanding citizens,” Darcy pointed out. “In or out of costume.”

“Gross,” Tony sighed.

“Indeed,” Thor agreed.

“Somebody get ready to write this down.” Jane cut a tiny sliver of apple and scraped it into the lid of a petri dish. “Come on, Mrs. Brisby. I’ve got a treat for you.”

“We’re not calling her Mrs. Brisby,” Tony said.

“Yeah. Mrs. Brisby never got experimented on.” They all looked at Darcy, and she stuck her tongue out at them. “What? That was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid. That and _Watership Down_.”

“And this is why you taser people instead of shaking hands,” Tony sighed.

“Guys? Pencils out?” Jane slid the dish into the rat’s cage. She blinked at them, her whiskers twitching.

“Should we not ask friend Erik for permission before experimenting on his pet?” Thor asked.

“She’s not really Erik’s.”

“And yet she’s clearly in Erik’s office, surrounded by Erik’s things, in a cage Erik put together for her,” Tony said.

“She’s one of the Sprague Dawley rats that the guys two floors down from Erik’s last research partner were working with before their grant ran out,” Jane explained. “She kept breaking out of her cage and sneaking into his office. She stowed away in one of his boxes when he left for New Mexico, and then she jumped ship to Erik’s office. She tried moving in with me one time, but she didn’t like the RV or something, so she snuck back to his office in my purse. He only bothers latching the cage because SHIELD makes him. She wants out of there, she’s gone. And since she was an adult when she showed up in Dr. Cavendish’s office, she’s already on borrowed time.”

The rat sniffed the piece of apple, then picked it up.

“So we’re basically feeding alien magic to a rat that’s already shown an unusual propensity for, um, everything,” Tony said. “Isn’t this exactly the plot of a half-dozen ‘50s sci-fi flicks?”

“Yup.” 

“Cool.”

Darcy grinned at him. “We could call her Justine.”

“Guys? Notes?” Jane sighed, watching the rat carefully.

She nibbled at it hesitantly, then ate it.

“Okay, Darcy? Note the time. She just consumed the sample.”

“Did we get a weight on that?” Darcy asked, tapping away at her phone.

“Less than half a gram.”

The rat licked the dish, then began grooming herself thoroughly.

“I feel like this would be more dramatic if we’d used an elderly non-albino rat,” Tony grumbled.

“Yes, well, I like Mrs. Brisby, so she gets the chance to be young again,” Jane retorted. “She seems like she’d definitely more alert.”

“And she’s sitting up straighter and moving a little bit quicker,” Darcy said.

“And this is why double-blind studies exist,” Tony sighed.

The rat made her way to her food dish and began eating. Thor frowned. “Is it normal for Midgardian rats to display such an appetite?”

“She’s been off her food for the last week. Erik was hoping she was just breaking into the vending machine again, but nobody found any gnawed-up packages. This is a very good sign,” Jane said happily. She slung her arm around Thor’s waist and leaned against him. “Now we just wait and see!”

“Sweet,” Darcy murmured, tapping away at her notes.

Tony’s phone buzzed, and he glanced at it before hitting ignore.

“That’s like the fifth time in the last half-hour,” Darcy said without looking up. “One of your ex-girlfriends trying to get a paternity test out of you?”

“It’s Hank,” Tony said, shrugging.

“Hank’s calling? Shouldn’t you pick up, then?” Jane asked.

“It might well be important. The Man of Ants is not well known for his frivolous behavior,” Thor said, nodding. “Of all our fellows, he is the least likely to simply wish for a companionable ear.”

“If it was really _that_ important, he’d have called Jan or Phil.”

Darcy shook her head. “Phil and Fury are probably still pretty pickled.”

“Mistress van Dyne is attending the birthing festivities of one of her bosom friends. She was quite firm on not wishing to be interrupted over petty difficulties.”

“Yeah, she’s been planning that thing for weeks. Everything would need to be on fire for him to call her out of it,” Jane said.

Tony sighed. “God damn it.”

“Yeah, maybe next time he calls, pick up?” Darcy suggested. The cage rattled as the rat climbed the bottle attachment and sniffed the clips holding it to the cage wall.

“Or I could keep ignoring him, and we could watch Mrs. Brisby do a fucking _backflip_ right off her water bottle,” Tony said slowly. “Everybody else saw that, right?”

“I think technically that was just a flip,” Jane said. “Look at you, you little show-off.” She elbowed Tony. “What was that you were saying about double-blinds?”

“I take it back. I’m pretty sure this is not just a placebo effect or observer bias.”

“Have you secured the data you desired, Jane?” Thor asked softly.

“Yeah, I think so.” She grinned at him and polished the apple on her shirt. “Let’s do this.”


	79. Chapter 79

Hank took a deep breath and strode into Hill’s office. He was a superhero. He’d faced down lava-spitting insectoids and flying monsters from other dimensions and people who could bend spacetime. He could do this.

“I don’t need to know what’s going on. I just need to know where you took them,” he announced, giving Hill his most serious look.

He recognized the flaw in his plan immediately when Hill shot him a withering glare, and he almost quailed under it.

“Did you need something, Hank?” she asked, her tone venomous. Hank looked around and bit his lip when he realized that the better part of the office’s electronics were visibly scorched and one wall had a sizeable dent in it. Hill, on the other hand, looked exactly as she always did. Not so much as a hair was out of place. He swallowed.

“Fury and Coulson. You took them somewhere. I need to know where. Right now.”

“I took them somewhere,” she repeated. “Are you drunk? Because if I need to institute a policy that forbids drinking during the day, I’m going to be extremely displeased.”

Hank pulled out his phone and scrolled through his photos for what felt like an eternity before he found the shot from the security camera that showed her loading the pair of them into the back of a black SUV with dark-tinted windows.

“Yes.” Hank held it up for her. “You took them somewhere. And if you don’t tell me where--”

Hill covered her eyes for a moment and growled. It took everything Hank had not to fall back a step, and then she sucked in a deep, noisy breath and visibly got herself back under control. 

“Pym.”

“Yes?”

“Roughly an hour prior to the time-stamp on that still, did you or did you not, at Coulson’s request, trace a call that was placed by a goddamned shapeshifter?” she asked levelly.

“I...oh.” He flushed and sucked at his teeth. “You don’t know where they are because that’s Jones.”

“That would certainly be where the smart money’s at,” Hill agreed. “How did that not occur to you?”

“I’d actually kind of forgotten she could do that,” he confessed. “I mean, she doesn’t take advantage of it that often.” He looked at the still again. “If I could do that, I’d do it all the time.”

“Yes, we all would. It’s cosmically unfair that the person who gets to do that only seems to use it to change her hairstyle more frequently than would be otherwise feasible. And if you say one word about the improvements it could make on your sex life, I will reassign you to one of our Siberian research facilities.”

Hank stared at her. “This has come up before, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Hill told him firmly. “Yes, it has.”

“You know, I feel like this would be an excellent time to apologize for marching in here and demanding to know where you took Fury.”

“Do you?” she asked, her eyebrows climbing. “Because I was thinking that there wasn’t really a good time to apologize for something like that.”

“Oh.”

“Mmm.” She smiled, and he fell back a step. “In fact, I was thinking that this entire conversation has been a very subtle way of volunteering to track the pack of them down by yourself.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” he said quickly. “Director Fury still blames me for that ant infestation in his sedan, and I called Jones a terrible person multiple times before she hung up on me. And Coulson gets very, uh, _affectionate_ when he’s drunk.”

“He does, doesn’t he?” Hill chuckled. “You know, in the event that he ever settles down and gets married, I’m slated to be his best man?”

“I didn’t know that, no.”

“All courtesy of one bottle of Jack. You know how many empties they found in Fury’s office?”

“None?” Hank asked hopefully.

“Three. I’m frankly impressed that they’re both still standing.” A cluster of wires started sparking and then fizzled back into silence, and her right eye twitched.

Hank spread his hands and looked around. “Exactly what happened--”

“Good luck, Pym,” she said firmly. “You’re going to need it. I suggest you leave immediately and report in once you’ve achieved your objective.”

“I...this isn’t negotiable, is it?” Hank asked, defeated.

“Not in the least.” Her lips parted a little, showing her teeth, and Hank squirmed.

“Um.”

“Smile, nod, and get the fuck out of my office,” Hill prompted.

“Oh. Right.” Hank backed away slowly. “Sure thing. I’m on the case. I’ll just be going. Now.”

*****

“I actually don’t feel all that different,” Jane said. She examined her hands and stretched experimentally. “At all. Do I look different?”

Thor, Darcy, and Tony studied her with varying degrees of interest.

“Not to my eyes,” Thor said after a moment. “But then, you are not aged, as the animal was. I would expect that the effect has been to grant you this youth for a greatly expanded length of time.”

“I’m with MC Hammer.” Tony nodded. “You don’t look different, but it’s not like you’re exactly going gray or anything.”

Darcy’s lips pursed and her eyes narrowed. “The skin around your eyes looks a little smoother, and you’re not slouching quite as much, and is that crick in your neck gone?”

Jane shook her head slowly, then she nodded. “Yeah, it is.”

“Well, looks like there was at least some measurable change, then. That’s been bothering you for a week.” Darcy tapped at her phone. “Time?”

“You’ve got it right on the screen,” Tony huffed.

“I’m verifying it. _God_.” She rolled her eyes at him. “You are such an engineer.”

“Says the girl who’s majoring in a social science.”

“You know, social science experiments would have a lot easier time replicating results if we got to control our subjects a little more,” she pointed out sweetly.

“Social science experiments would have a lot easier time getting funding if you guys had to take an ethics course your first year in,” he retorted, edging away.

“Guys?” Jane said sharply.

“Indeed, this is no time for bickering amongst friends,” Thor added.

“Sorry,” Tony muttered.

“He started it,” Darcy said.

“So.” Jane laced her fingers together and leaned back against the wall. “It probably worked. At least we’re not seeing any ill effects. We can’t publish. What now?”

“We hit a bar?” Tony suggested.

“Celebratory drinks,” Darcy agreed. “On Stark.”

“I can see no flaw in this plan,” Thor laughed. He grinned at Jane and extended his hand. She took it, and he pulled her into a tight hug. “Let us make merry. And perhaps feast?”

“Sure, why not? There are bars out there that serve food, right?” Tony asked.

“Are you legitimately asking that because you don’t know it’s a thing?” Darcy asked suspiciously.

“Look, when you’re rich enough that restaurants with a three-month wait for reservations will do take-out for you, you don’t have to know the answer to these sorts of questions.”

“Yes, bars serve food. Knock if off, the pair of you,” Jane sighed. “Or at least don’t get worse because you’re drunk. Come on, let’s get a cab.”

*****

“This is a lot of options,” Fury muttered, squinting at the menu. “Like...a lot. I could order every side on this page, and they’d just bring ‘em all right out to the table.”

“We should. I could eat a bowl of oatmeal and a bunch of french fries right now.” Phil turned a packet of sugar over in his hands and looked at the little placard advertising the restaurant’s desserts. “And a pie. A whole strawberry pie.”

“You two assholes said you wanted pancakes,” Lucy said, her forehead resting on her arms and her voice muffled. She straightened up and eyed them suspiciously. “And are you getting drunker? You didn’t seem this drunk when I picked you up.”

“We may have chugged the last of the bottle when we thought you were still Hill,” Phil offered. “ _May_. The whole day’s a little fuzzy at this point, honestly.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny any statement made by this man,” Fury said flatly.

Lucy groaned and snatched the menus out of their hands. She signalled the waitress, who approached them warily.

“Hi. Can I have a whole pot of coffee and a pizza omelet?”

“Sure thing, hon.”

“Great. These two are each having a tall stack. He gets a side of sausage, he gets a side of oatmeal, and if we could also get a pitcher of water, that would be great.”

“That’s not what I wanted,” Phil protested.

“I outrank you, agent,” Fury grunted.

“Um.”

“Please don’t listen to them. I’m the one paying for this--and yes, I will be tipping _very generously_.” She stopped and pulled a wad of tens out of her pocket. “Actually, let’s just cut to the chase. Here.” She smoothed the bills out and handed them to the waitress. “I apologize for the fact that your day involves putting up with us. He does not outrank me, and the other one does really want pancakes and oatmeal. I would also like three slices of strawberry pie, after we’ve had our meals. Thank you.”

The waitress blinked at the stack of bills, then shoved them in her pocket. “That was a pot of coffee, a pizza omelet, two tall stacks, sausage, oatmeal, a pitcher of water, and three pieces of strawberry pie?”

“Yup.”

“Coming right up.”

“If you’re pretending to be Hill, verisimilitude would indicate that I should pretend to outrank you,” Fury told her.

“I’m only pretending to be Hill to give Hill an alibi for murdering Strange with a stapler,” Lucy grunted. “And if I have to take one or both of you to the ER to get your stomachs pumped, you’ll be intensely grateful that I only let you have the pancakes.”

“Not the image I need right before breakfast, Jones,” Phil said with a grimace.

“Yeah, well, you’re the one who shotgunned a bottle of booze that cost more than what I just handed that poor woman, so hush your noise.” Lucy kneaded her temples. “And I’m doing you both a huge solid right now, so also hush your noise.”

Phil’s phone buzzed again, and he sighed and hit ignore. 

“Nobody wants to talk about ants right now, Hank,” he muttered.

“No phones at the table, Coulson,” Lucy said.

“Never expected that guy to get so needy the second his lady was out doing something without him,” Fury snorted. “Half the time she can’t get his attention off those damn projects without pulling the fire alarm.”

“You two do understand that I’m a supervillain who routinely operates in direct opposition to your interests, right?” Lucy asked blandly.

The waitress frowned at her, her hand halfway to the carafe on her tray. Lucy gave her a bright smile and shrugged.

“It’s true. Huge supervillain. You may have heard of me.”

“Nobody’s heard of you,” Fury said.

“She shot Dr. Doom with a t-shirt cannon,” Phil explained helpfully.

“Oh.” The woman set the pitcher of water and the carafe on the table quickly, her brow furrowing and her expression mildly confused. “I thought Dr. Doom was bad, too?”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t ruin the sanctimonious prick’s day,” Lucy said. “Excuse my language, but he really is just awful.”

“Sure thing. I’ll be back as soon as your food’s ready.”

“Did you just scare that poor woman out of bringing us our meals?” Fury growled.

“No. Maybe. I don’t fucking know.”

“You could just do the thing.” Phil waved his hands and wiggled his fingers.

“The thing?” she asked, cocking her head.

“Yeah. You know. The _thing_.”

“Are you trying to say ‘magic,’ Coulson?”

They stopped at the sudden clatter of an overturned tray. A burst of shouting followed, and a small scuffle broke out on the other side of the restaurant. Lucy filled her coffee cup and added a few packets of sugar.

“I feel like we should be doing something about this,” Coulson said slowly.

“You want the Strategic Homeland Intervention and Enlistment Local Doohickey to intervene in a fistfight in Denny’s?” Lucy asked. “Because I’m pretty sure that’s not what you guys do. And also this is Denny’s. I’m pretty sure they’ve got a protocol for dealing with fistfights. Drink your water.”

“That’s not what it stands for,” Fury said.

“Yeah? What part did I mess up, then?”

His lips moved for a moment before he gave up and glared at her. “Go to hell.”

“About what I thought,” she chuckled, dodging a flying glass.

“Really think we should do something about this,” Phil sighed.

“And I’m telling you...holy shit, is that guy on fire?” She laughed to herself. “Leave it to some chucklefuck to start a fight with a super in the non-smoking section.”

“We should--”

“You should sit tight, because you’re squishy and flammable and made of meat. I’m going to go get a fire extinguisher and yell at some people about fine dining etiquette.” Lucy wadded up her napkin and tossed it onto the table. “Back in a minute.”


	80. Chapter 80

“This is a goddamned tragedy, Phil.” Fury poked at his pancakes with his fork.

“They’re not _that_ bad. Try the blueberry syrup.” Phil turned the syrup carousel, trying to locate the pitcher of blueberry. “Does six flavors of fake syrup seem excessive to you? It seems a little excessive to me. Maybe if they were labeled?”

“Not the pancakes,” Fury snorted. He jerked his chin at the ruckus on the other side of the restaurant. Lucy ducked a punch without looking up and fumbled with the nozzle on a large red cylinder. “Has she ever used a fire extinguisher before in her life?”

“Um.” Phil chewed slowly, thinking. “Not for the recommended purpose of putting out fires, I don’t think. Probably because she’s usually the one starting fires. She’s hit a bunch of things with them. And she hosed Satana down with one of the ten-dollar sodium bicarbonate deals once.”

“Did she?” he chuckled. “Good for her. They had it coming after _Guitar Heaven_.”

“What?” Phil’s eyes narrowed, then he waved his fork vaguely. “No, not the band. Hellstorm’s sister.”

“Daimon Hellstrom’s sister is called Satana.” Fury rubbed his eye and sighed. “That is just--”

“Nick, before we--”

“Hang on. She’s given up on the extinguisher.” Fury picked up his cell, focused for a moment, and snapped a picture. “This is going on twitter.”

“Taste chemical death, you inflammable bastard!”

Phil looked over his shoulder. The magician was tearing open a large cardboard box and emptying its contents at the wall of fire behind her.

“What is it with her and non-dairy creamer?”

A gout of flame erupted behind them. Lucy grabbed the fire extinguisher again and doused it.

“Oh.” Phil nodded to himself. “I was not aware non-dairy creamer did that.”

“At least she’s figured out to aim for the base of the fire,” Fury sighed. “It’s only on there in pictograms, diagrams, and five different languages.”

Phil grunted. “As I was saying, before we start talking about that particular family’s naming conventions, I should probably point out that there were literal demons and plots to take over the physical realm involved. So.”

“Yes, yes, they’re not subtle.” A loud metallic thud echoed through the restaurant, followed by the sharp sound of a large plate glass window shattering. “Speaking of not subtle.”

“Mmm?” Phil swallowed. “What about not subtle?”

Lucy hurled a table out the window after her opponent, then jumped after it.

“Who approved putting the visitor center and training hall in two giant geodesic domes at the base of the Triskelion?” Fury asked.

“That would be Hill,” Phil said, biting back a smirk.

“And no one saw fit to point out the obvious? What do I pay you people for?” Fury picked up one of the syrup bottles. “What is this, apricot?”

“I think the waitress said strawberry.”

“Huh.”

“Nick, the whole thing was called Project SACK,” Phil said. “Which didn’t even stand for anything. There wasn’t anything to point out.”

“You all just let Maria add a pair of balls--”

“--to your giant phallic structure, yes.”

“Without even shooting me a memo. If I wanted my giant phallic structure to have giant geodesic testicles attached to it, the lowest-bidding sub-contractor would have finished work on them last year. Again, what do I pay you people for?” Fury took another picture. “How does she keep getting job offers? This is the worst thing I’ve seen since you made that bunch of forensic accounts go through combat training.”

Phil twisted around in his seat. “Has anything popped up on fire-guy from facial recognition?”

“Not yet.”

“Probably because he’s a civilian, then.” Phil shrugged. “She usually brings a wiffle bat to a gunfight when it comes to civilians. In terms of supervillain behavior, it’s sort of endearing. I really don’t want to discourage it.”

“How many times do I have to tell you I’ve never read Harry Potter, Phil?” Fury sighed.

“Nick?”

“The hell’s a wiffle? And she does know she’s pretending to be someone with a side-arm and a license to kill, doesn’t she?”

“You never played wiffle ball?” Phil brightened. Fury glared at him. “Wiffle ball’s great. It’s like baseball, but everything’s plastic. It’s for kids old enough to play team sports but too young for it not to devolve into a no-holds-barred melee in the absence of immediate adult supervision.”

“So a wiffle bat is a pretend murder-weapon commonly used by Caucasian seven-year-olds?” Fury asked drily.

“Pretty much.” Phil paused mid-chew, then swallowed hurriedly. “Have you been putting those pictures on the official SHIELD account?”

“Probably.” Fury drained his coffee mug. “Why?”

“Well, Jones still looks like Hill,” Phil said, frowning.

“And?”

“And I think that means you’re putting pictures of Hill in a slap-fight with a guy who barely qualifies as a grease-fire in a Denny’s parking lot out as official SHIELD tweets. While she’s already mad at us. I don’t think the math checks out on that.”

Fury cut up a few sausage links and nodded slowly. “You know, I hear Cape Verde’s nice this time of year. We should really go establish a SHIELD presence. Very quietly.”

“Or we could just delete them immediately,” Phil said, pursing his lips. He grabbed the phone and scrolled through the feed. “Wow, that is a lot of retweets. Shit.”

“Huh.” Fury thought for a moment. “We could throw the phone at the supervillain, run away, and claim we were never here?”

“I’m positive there’s some flaw in that plan, but I’m still too buzzed to figure out what it is,” Phil muttered. “She’s hacked stuff before, right? This isn’t _that_ out of character.”

“Didn’t she stage a fake drug deal with two tons of baking powder just to embarrass a DEA agent once? Nothing’s out of character.” Fury patted his pockets. “Did you bring cash? My wallet’s gone.”

“I think you left it on my desk when you were showing me those adorable pictures of your niece. And Jones said she was good for the check,” Phil reminded him. “I’ll get a cab, you ditch the phone?”

“Wait for me a block south of here. Try to be inconspicuous.” 

Phil looked around them, then back at Fury. 

“Less conspicuous than this,” he amended. “Try to be less conspicuous than this.”

“That, I can probably do,” Phil said. “Probably.”

“Just don’t do that thing where you cue up the James Bond theme on your phone and play it at top volume, and I think we’ll be fine.”

“One time, Nick,” Phil protested. “I do that one time, and--”

“Just get going. I’ve got evidence to plant.”

*****

Hank surveyed the half-scorched and half-flooded parking lot before waving tentatively at the soaked and disheveled version of Hill standing in the middle of it. The surrounding EMTs and police responders were studiously ignoring her. Lucy glared at him before slouching over.

“ _What_?” she snapped.

“Um. First, I think it might be a good idea to stop impersonating a federal officer,” he said. “Especially when you look like a drowned rat, and that federal officer is a little sensitive about her public image.”

“Impersonating a federal officer?” Lucy asked, her tone cold.

“Maria Hill’s the one who sent me to find you. Or, technically, to find Coulson and Fury.”

“Did it ever occur to you that _that_ was the person impersonating a federal officer?”

“No, because she was in her office, and you’re in the middle of a you-sized mess.”

“A me-sized mess?” Lucy snorted. “Fine, yes, I’m impersonating a federal officer. And no, I’m not going to stop, because if I stop, then those assholes over there are going to try to arrest me.” She pointed back at the knot of cops. “And if they try to arrest me, this is going to get even less fun than it already is.”

Lucy pulled out a pack of sodden cigarettes and sighed. She snapped her fingers, and a cup of water drained out of the box. She lit one and took a long drag. Hank made a face.

“Could you make the rest of you look as presentable as your commercially-available carcinogens?” he asked plaintively. “I’m pretty sure this is going to be on the news, and I’m almost as sure I’m going to be held personally responsible if this is what goes down as Hill’s file footage.”

Lucy shot him a venomous look, then blew a thin stream of smoke at him. “Fuck off. Which, incidentally, is what Coulson and Fury did about ten minutes ago. Pricks stuck me with the check, and explaining shit to the cops, and didn’t even say thank you. Or apologize for calling me.”

“Do you know where they went?”

“Have you tried tracking Coulson’s cell? I assume that’s how you found this place.”

“Actually, I just checked Google News. And, you know, Twitter.” He held up his phone and showed her an HD photo of herself hitting a humanoid ball of fire with a plastic serving tray.

“You found me by checking the internet.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before you brought it up,” he confessed. “I mean, no offense, but it seems pretty obvious in retrospect. You tend to do things with a certain flare for…”

“Awesomeness? Genius?” Lucy prompted.

“Not exactly.”

“You are aware that we’re standing less than a hundred feet away from a fire truck that I’m capable of doing truly terrible things with,” she pointed out blandly.

“That would probably have had more impact before I got dressed down by Hill,” Hank said. “You’re click-bait.”

Lucy finished the cigarette in one long pull and exhaled slowly. “Go to hell, Pym. I’m a Platonic ideal whose perfection can’t be perceived by flawed mortals such as yourself.”

“I don’t even know how to begin refuting that,” he sighed.

“Because it’s the essence of truth.”

“Nope! And just the fact that I’m having this conversation means that I probably need a life-coach and a therapist. You know I just wanted a nice, peaceful week in the lab?” he asked.

“Don’t care,” Lucy told him. “And if I thought you might actually have been listening to me, I’d never have told you to check the internet.”

“Yeah, well, you did.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I really should have gotten into costume for this.”

“Then it would be an Avengers thing instead of a Denny’s thing, and nobody wants that,” Lucy said. “Ugh. I knew coming here was a bad move. We should have gone to IHOP or something. It’s like some sort of universal constant that at least one brawl a week has to happen in any given city-based Denny’s location.”

Hank glanced over at the sullen-looking man covered in soot and a fire blanket. “How did this even start? Who _is_ that guy?”

“Just some douche who started throwing silverware when they told him he couldn’t smoke inside. I guess if he wants to run with it he can call himself Fire Fork or something. But causing a scene and being on fire aren’t really that much of a theme, you know? He’d be better off just taking his breach-of-the-peace charge and going home.”

Hank stared at her for a second. “You know what the best thing about you is?”

“That I haven’t turned you into a termite yet?” she asked levelly.

“That you can say stuff like that without even the slightest hint of irony or self-awareness. I think that might actually be your real talent. The ‘magic’ is just window-dressing.”

“You just air-quoted ‘magic’. I cannot believe I’m standing here literally looking like another person, and you air-quoted ‘magic’. You are such a jerkoff,” Lucy chuckled. “I brought one of you assholes back from the dead. You’re just mad because you can’t bust out an electron microscope and explain every little thing about it right this second.”

“There are scientific, rational explanations for your powers. Just waving your hands and saying ‘magic’ is not an acceptable answer,” Hank snapped. “It’s like saying phlogiston is responsible for sight.”

“What does the dude who turned the Rhone green have to do with sight?” she asked, frowning.

“What?”

“Phlogiston. The Captain Planet motherfucker who dyed the Rhone green that one time. Accidentally pissed off that ancient river-god? Thor had to go talk it down? What’s he got to do with sight? Dude didn’t even have any powers, unless a truck and a half-dozen barrels of dye count now.” Lucy shook her head. “Which, just for the record, they don’t.”

Hank pinched the bridge of his nose and counted to ten.

“Do you have any idea where Coulson and Fury went?”

“Well, they were trying to get to the airport, but I’m pretty sure the cabbie kicked their asses out at that shabby little movie theater like a mile that-a-way.” Lucy pointed. “If you’d brought van Dyne’s wings, you could just fly there.”

“Or you could, you know...” He managed a pained, hopeful smile.

“I could ironically and with great self-awareness help you out?” she asked.

“It would probably really annoy Fury and Coulson to be found right this second?” Hank offered. “And they did leave you to pay the bill and fight, um, some guy by yourself.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Silverware could have been your only weakness?” he asked.

“I’m a magician, not a werewolf. And this is a bargain-basement pancake-chain, so even if I were, I’m pretty sure I’d be safe.” Lucy wrung out the hem of her shirt. “So yes, I’m peeved with them. I’m not peeved enough with _them_ to help _you_ , though.”

“Werewolves do not--wait, _do_ werewolves exist?” Hank asked.

“Fuck if I know,” she grunted. “I’ve got precisely zero dollars riding on the outcome of that question, so I’ve never looked into it.”

“Hang on, the internet might be coming to my rescue,” he muttered. 

“About werewolves?”

He ignored her and frowned as he flipped through several screens. “Or not. Is it okay if Jane and Thor get married?”

“I know I’m going to regret asking you this, but how the hell would that even _begin_ to be something that’s any of my business?” Lucy demanded. “I mean, on any level whatsoever. How would I even start answering that?”

“I thought you might have some idea,” Hank said weakly. “You had that heart-to-heart with the Asgardian queen, and all. And Thor’s your--”

“If you say ‘brother,’ I will actually follow through with that whole threat to turn you into a termite. Unironically.”

“Nemesis?”

“Oh, Buddha on a trampoline, he isn’t even that.” Lucy rolled her eyes. “Why are they asking you?”

“They’re not. They’re announcing it. I’m asking you if it’s going to start a transdimensional hammer-war or something,” Hank explained.

“That’s kind of a Fury question, assuming he ever sobers up.”

“Or if it might result in some weird unexpected political alliances,” he mused. “I mean, Darcy’s involved. She really likes unnecessarily-complicated trade agreements.”

“Still Fury’s department.”

“Or if it would get Thor disowned.”

“I...you know, now that you mention it, this does seem to be the sort of thing I should look into,” Lucy said, her brows knitting. “I mean, if people getting disowned is on the table. That sounds serious.”

“Oh, for the love of--” Hank took a deep breath. “Never mind.”

“No, I should do something. This seems to qualify for some completely ironic intervention.” She grinned. “The least ironic intervention ever.”

“Um, obliviate?” Hank waved his hands at her.

“Wow.”

“No good?”

“Seriously, that’s just. Wow.” Lucy reached over and flicked his nose.

“Ow!” Hank jumped back, his hands going to his face. “That really stings. What the hell?”

“Walk it off, Pym. I’ve got a wedding to facilitate, and you’ve got two senior-level spies to locate for extraordinary rendition to Hill’s office.” Lucy cracked her knuckles and raised her eyebrows. “And I genuinely don’t know what to tell you if you think Harry Potter stuff works. Maybe that balrogs definitely don’t exist? Did that need to be said?”

“This has been the worst day,” Hank grunted, rubbing the tip of his nose. “It really has.”

“At least you’ve got an alibi for your lab specimens swarming into the air ducts?” Lucy offered.

“My lab specimens aren’t in the air ducts.” Hank carefully prodded the cartilage.

“Weren’t,” she said. “Your lab specimens _weren’t_ in the air ducts.”

“Oh, hell.” Hank glared at her. “There were _velvet ants_ in there.”

“Woe betide my enemies, Pym.” She grinned at him again, and he took a quick step back. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got plans to facilitate.”

Lucy vanished, leaving Hank to meet the questioning stares of the emergency responders and ignore the persistent buzzing from his phone. All he had to do was find two people who could hide from the best, get them back to someone they didn’t want to see, and stop a magic-using supervillain from doing...something. He wasn’t even entirely sure what her angle was.


	81. Chapter 81

Lucy paused and checked her reflection in the bar’s window. Pym hadn’t been far off the mark when he’d suggested she clean up. She shook herself, and water sluiced from her clothes. When she let go of the illusion of Hill’s shape, she looked slightly rumpled but otherwise no worse for wear. She straightened her clothes and pushed open the door.

The noise and general hubbub hit her like a wave. It was easy to see Thor and Jane at the center of it, with Tony and Darcy not far from them. The four of them looked half-drunk and openly jubilant, and their mood had spilled over onto the rest of the bar’s patrons. Lucy wove through the crowd until she could see the bartender and flagged her down.

“What’ll it be, lady?”

Lucy took out a fifty and snapped it crisply. “If a black guy with an eyepatch and a dopey-looking white guy in a suit show up together and ask for anything but water, don’t give it to them.”

“That’s really specific,” the woman said, raising an eyebrow.

“They’re really a pain in the ass.” Lucy folded the bill and slipped it to her. “The saddest pilsner you’ve got on draft for me.”

The bartender shook her head and slid a pint across the bar. “You want to start a tab and stick around for a while?”

“Much as I’d love to, but I’ve got a pair of lovebirds to get to a sketchy chapel,” Lucy said. She paid for the beer and took a sip, stifling a grimace. “Exactly what I asked for. That’ll do it, all right.”

“Oh, you’re with them?” The woman looked visibly disappointed. “You and the little brunette…?”

“What? With the taser?” Lucy asked. “Oh. No. No. Nothing like that. I’m single.” She leaned halfway across the bar and smiled. “I am _incredibly_ single. I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name?”

“Sister!” Thor’s booming welcome drowned out the bartender’s answer, and Lucy found herself swept into a crushing hug. He let go and frowned slightly. “Why do you smell of pancakes and kerosene?”

“Long story,” she gritted. “Long, very stupid story.”

“Innkeeper!” He turned to the bartender, who barely managed to suppress an amused smile. “This is my sister! Anything she wishes, please add it to our bill!”

She tilted her head at Lucy. “You’re from another planet?”

“No, I’m from the midwest,” Lucy sighed. “Also a very long, stupid story.”

“I’m on again Monday night. It’s a slow shift. You want to drop by and let me be the judge of that?” she asked.

“I would like that very, very much.” Lucy grinned at her and got a wink back before Thor steered her toward Jane.

“You must join us in celebration,” he said earnestly. “Jane’s experiments have born fruit, and we’ve resolved to marry.”

“Well, that’s exactly why I’m here, as it so happens,” Lucy told him.

“Please tell me you don’t object.” His eyes clouded over, and she could see him calculating how to get them out of the crowded bar and into the less-crowded street if it came to a fight. She couldn’t exactly blame him.

“Chill,” she sighed. “I’m here to help.”

“You approve, then? Jane is a fine woman, and she shall make an equally fine queen.”

“I’ll take your word for it on the last bit,” Lucy grunted. “Mostly I just want you two to be happy.”

He beamed at her. “I had no idea you’d become so close while you were protecting her.”

“She makes an impression.” Lucy craned her neck. “I’m surprised Stark didn’t offer to fly you two to Vegas.”

The crowd parted around him as they got closer, and Jane waved. Darcy and Tony both narrowed their eyes, their postures shifting slightly. Lucy rolled her eyes and waved, and Darcy at least relaxed.

“You here to rain on everybody’s parade, Schmendrick?” Tony asked.

“I’m here to get this show on the road, Robocop,” she said evenly.

“All right!” Darcy chirped. “Finally, somebody with some sense. Come on in for a hug, Jones.”

“No hugging.” Lucy stopped her with a look. “Sense, yes. Hugging, no. You two are getting married?”

“Yeah.” Jane nodded and grinned broadly. “It seems like the right step to take next, you know?”

“Sure. Why not?” Lucy took a long sip of her beer. “So, you guys want to get hitched tonight before half the bureaucracy of SHIELD tries to cockblock you? Because I’m here to make that happen if you want.”

“You seem really over-invested in this all of the sudden,” Tony said, pointedly taking a seat. 

Lucy smiled thinly and sat down across from him. She gestured sharply, and another three chairs appeared. Thor, Jane, and Darcy joined them.

“Okay, so I’ve been incommunicado for a while. It happens. I’ve been busy fucking up my life even worse than usual, you guys have been busy doing whatever led to this, we’re all adults, it happens. But the point is, I’m here for you now. And me being suddenly over-invested in this works out in your favor, so maybe don’t look a gift horse in the mouth?” she said.

“You truly have an ulterior motive in this?” Thor asked, his face falling.

“How long have we known each other? I’ve got an ulterior motive for getting out of bed in the morning,” Lucy snapped. Tony snorted. “Oh, like you don’t?”

“He does?” Darcy asked, sitting back.

Lucy shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not the one whose servers get a huge data-transfer every time SHIELD has some easily-preventable emergency.”

“Oh my _god_ , Tony!” Darcy hissed. “You’ve been stealing SHIELD’s data every chance you get?”

“It’s not stealing, per se,” Tony hedged.

Jane glared at him. “We asked you point blank if you could get us access to the stuff they swiped and ‘lost’ when Thor first turned up, and you said no.”

“And I checked for it! I honestly did,” he protested, giving Lucy a dirty look. “They really did lose it. Or just straight-up deleted it and then burned the hard drive. I don’t know which. But I did check for that data, and I didn’t find it. I was being completely up-front with you there.”

“So you don’t mind if we double-check next time we’re at the tower?” Darcy demanded.

“Knock yourselves out.” Tony spread his hands. “Scout’s honor.”

“Must you start these fights?” Thor asked her with a sigh.

“Technically, Stark started this fight,” she said, finishing her beer. “The ulterior motive in this case works out in your favor, though. Anybody gives you static about the marriage, just point ‘em in my direction.”

“Do you truly need more strife in your affairs?” he scoffed. “Friend Pym has been most displeased with your behavior.”

“Friend Pym’s one to talk. Last I saw him, he was running from Hill because he’d lost Fury and Coulson and something about all of his bugs making new nests in SHIELD HQ’s air ducts.”

“Hank’s bugs are in the ductwork now?” Tony groaned. “God help us all. He had a colony of bullet ants in that lab last time I checked.”

“All the more reason for everybody to take off for Vegas, then,” Lucy said. The more territory between her and Hill when Hank inevitably blamed her, the better. “You guys elope, get married tonight, honeymoon tomorrow. By the time the dust settles over Pymgate, and they’re done fumigating that huge cubicle farm, it’ll be too late for an annulment. Bing, bang, boom.” She paused. “Wait, aren’t bullet ants solitary? How do you get a colony of them?”

Tony tipped his chair back. “There’s no such thing as a solitary ant.”

“Velvet ants,” Lucy pointed out.

“Oh! Those are actually wasps,” Darcy said. “They’re, um, wait. How did Jan explain it?”

“I think she just said they’re wingless,” Jane offered.

“No, she said something about the boys.” Darcy frowned. “Oh, right. They can fly, and they pick the girls up and are all like _nyaaaaaaaaarm_ ,” she mimed a swooping wasp with her hands, “and it’s super-romantic, and that’s how the girls decide who to mate with. And the girls are the ones that sting, so they can also do like coordinated dive-bomb attacks if they team up with the boys. And they chirp!”

Lucy and Thor stared at her.

“I, uh.” Lucy coughed. “Are you sure you’re not thinking of crickets?”

“Crickets don’t do any of that,” Tony said.

“They do chirp, friend Tony. I have heard them.”

“Okay, well, they chirp.”

“I think we’re getting off-topic, here,” Lucy said firmly. “That topic being all of us getting to Vegas, and you two getting married. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing saying you have to be sober to get married in Vegas, so you don’t even have to stop drinking. Stark, you want to get them fueling up that jet and filing that flight plan?”

“How did I get volunteered for this?” he protested.

“By being wrong about crickets. Come on, guys. Chop, chop. Before the nefarious forces of anti-romance get the exotic, terrifying insects out of their air systems.”

“I’m still a little fuzzy on why you’re being so helpful,” Darcy said. “You are up to something, aren’t you?”

Lucy sighed and puffed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. “Consider it my way of making up for like, ten percent of the shit I’ve pulled in the last year, okay? You guys are acting like you don’t want to get married.”

“Of course we want to get married,” Jane said quickly. “I’m just not sure we want our wedding to be phase two in somebody’s evil plan.”

“Okay, first point? My plans aren’t evil, they’re awesome. Second point? My plans don’t have phases, because I’m capable of learning from experience, and none of them ever make it to phase two without getting horribly derailed. So my terrible, nefarious, no-good plan is basically step one: get you two married. Step two is that there is no step two.” Lucy got to her feet. “So, come on. Tab out, call a town car, let’s go.”

“Step two could be we all get drunk and lose to the house, if we go to Vegas,” Darcy said.

“There’s no losing to the house when I’m around,” Lucy promised. She spread her fingers. “Magic, remember?”

“Step two: get drunk and get banned from Nevada for life, then,” Tony muttered.

“It is not a bad plan,” Thor chuckled, glancing at Jane. She smiled back at him. “Truly, when is the last time we’ve wanted to go to Nevada?”

“See? Now you’re talking sense. Make the call, Stark. I’m not teleporting a big group of drunk people. Bad things happen.”

“Please, Tony?” Jane asked. Darcy leaned on him and batted her eyelashes.

“On the condition that you stop doing that immediately, Darcy,” he said, shying away from her. “I feel like I’m going to be called up in front of Congress in twenty years to answer for a picture of this moment, like Rumsfeld and that photo of him with Saddam Hussein.”

“Pfft.” Darcy crossed her arms. “If anyone would be getting subpoenaed by a committee over a picture of this, it’d be me. You’re not even that good already, and you’re the one with all the weapons.”

Lucy shook her head and leaned across the table to steal his phone.

“Hey!”

“What? We’re all agreed. You’re flying us to Vegas. I’m just expediting things while you squabble with Lewis about who’s going to grow up to be the supervillain.” Lucy scrolled through his contacts and tapped out a quick message. “Which, in my opinion, is a completely incomprehensible argument for your two to be having when you’re literally sitting two feet from an actual, current supervillain. Two seconds ago, you were protesting this whole plan on the grounds that I’m up to no good right now.”

“Oh. Right.” Darcy pressed the heel of her palm against her forehead.

“Give me my phone back, please?” Tony asked, his expression turning cranky. Lucy tossed it back to him and sat back, a smirk settling onto her face. “Thank you. You _are_ up to no good. I’m sure of it. I’m just also sure that Darcy’s going to be much better at being up to no good when she finally gets serious about it in a decade or so. Probably right in time to derail my promising political career.”

“Hank?” Jane called, angling herself to get a better view through the crowd. Hank stood on tiptoe after hearing his name, then waved at them.

“Hi, guys. Mind if I borrow Jones for a moment?” he asked, a nervous smile fixed on his face.

“You okay, there, buddy?” Tony asked.

“Yeah. Fine. Never better. I just need to talk to Jones for a minute. Right now.”

“Of course,” Thor said, moving his chair to the side to give Lucy room to slide out.

She gave them all an over-wide grin and threw her arm over Hank’s shoulders, guiding him out of earshot of the table.

“How did you even find me?” she hissed. “I haven’t made the news _once_ in the last--”

Hank pointed across the street at the neatly double-parked tank.

“Oh.”

“Where did you even get a tank in the middle of a city?” he asked hollowly.

“With the increasing militarization of the domestic police force, you’d be amazed what’s just kind of lying around these days,” she explained.

“You stole a tank from the cops because you were too cheap to take a cab?” 

“No, I didn’t steal a tank from the cops. I defrauded the cops out of a tank. It’s actually really impressive what people will just let you sign out of the arsenal if they think you’re SHIELD and you tell them the fate of the free world is at stake,” Lucy said patiently. “And if you think I’m cramming into a cab with Fury and Coulson while they’re still drunk, you’re nuts.”

“Wait, you’ve got them _with_ you?” he asked, looking around. “They’re here? Oh, hell. They’re not in here, are they? I was kind of hoping they’d be sobering up by now.”

“Don’t be stupid, of course they’re not in here. They’re even worse drunk than they are sober. They’re never drinking again, if I can help it. They’re sleeping it off in the tank.” Lucy jerked her head toward the open hatch. “They’re both probably still armed, though, so be sure to yell before you poke your head into the cabin.”

“Why did you even bring them with you to steal a tank?” Hank groaned. “Couldn’t you have put them in a cab and sent them back to headquarters if you didn’t want to deal with them?”

“I needed somebody to actually drive the tank, Pym. Fuck if I know how to do that.” She tapped her temple. “Logistics, you know?”

“You let them drive a tank, drunk, through the city?” He covered his eyes with his hands. “Do me a favor and tell Jan that I love her very much, and I’ll send word once it’s safe. I’ll pick somewhere nice to lay low. We can start over once I’ve established residence. Tell her to talk to Bruce and see if he’s got any tips.”

“Don’t be such a jackass,” Lucy sighed, exasperated. “They were driving, I was navigating. Them being drunk was way less of a thing.”

“Well, I guess that makes it all okay, then,” he said acidly.

“See? You’re worrying over nothing.” She looked around and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Fucking Christ, I wish you could still smoke in bars.”

“How did you even get a tank here without getting the National Guard called on you?” he demanded, frowning out the window at it.

Lucy shrugged. “People get a little excited seeing a tank driving down the road, yeah, but once you stop for the red lights and yield to oncoming traffic, they assume you’re legit.”

“That is the worst thing I’ve heard today,” Hank groaned.

“Hmm.” Lucy chewed her lip. “How about ‘Those lab specimens you released into SHIELD’s air conditioning system included bullet ants’?”

“You...my lab…” Hank sputtered, blinking. “Oh my god, my bullet ants. You let out my bullet ants. The bullet ants that were supposed to be shipped out yesterday, but the delivery guy never showed, and….Hill is going to murder me. Hill is going to murder me on live tv, and no one’s going to do anything about it.”

“Probably,” Lucy said, shrugging. “But here’s what I think you should do.”

“I’m not going to stage an uprising of every termite in the city until she agrees to forgive me,” Hank spat.

Lucy took a deep breath. “Okay, that’s not a bad start, and I mean, really. A-plus for effort. But what I was going to say is you take Fury, Coulson, and the tank back to SHIELD, take credit for rescuing them and finding the cops’ missing tank. Take credit for salvaging Hill’s reputation, lest she go down as a tank-thief and a parking-lot brawler. You know, pretty much everything I’ve done in the last twenty-four hours. Meanwhile, I’ll be getting Thor and Jane to Vegas for an immediate wedding, which will take the heat off you once Hill finds out about it and Fury sobers up.”

“And you get what out of this?” Hank asked.

“You wound me.” She moved out of the way to let a woman past. “Why do I need to get anything out of it to set this up?”

“You’re not altruistic!” he protested. “At all! We’ve established this at least five times in the past three years.”

“Fine.” Lucy rolled her eyes. “I get officially disowned once Asgard finds out who arranged everything,” she said smugly. “It’s a win-win situation. For everybody. You guys don’t have to triangulate around the weird imaginary connection to alien space-lords when you’re dealing with me, I don’t have Thor smashing sideways through my plans, and Asgard gets to go back to ignoring me. It was actually your idea.”

“I was _kidding_ about the disowning thing,” Hank hissed. “I think. I’m still a little unclear on the details of succession and alternate heirs and how much trouble Thor being here causes. And I don’t think Asgard wants to ignore you.”

“No, you weren’t kidding. And it’s a great idea, it really is.” Lucy shook her head. “And sure they do. Being associated with me offers no benefits and a significant number of drawbacks. Especially if I’m going to actively meddle in their affairs by arranging unsanctioned weddings by the crown princes to random unapproved people from other realms. Which I am. They disown me, they get to cut ties without officially saying they were wrong about me before. It’s perfect. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself.”

“Because it’s kind of insane,” Hank said. Lucy pursed her lips and he sighed. “Which, admittedly, has not been much of an impediment before. But it’s not going to work.”

“Well, I guess you get to pick between getting murdered to death by Hill live on CNN and stopping a wedding your friends want to have, then, don’t you?” Lucy asked.

“Just answer one question for me,” he sighed.

“Sure.”

“How high were you when this struck you as the solution to all life’s problems?”

“Stone cold sober, you prick,” Lucy snapped. “Which is actually when I have most of my worst ideas, but I have a _really_ great feeling about this one.”

“I’m thinking maybe you should sleep on it,” someone interrupted them. Hank stared past her, his mouth hanging open.

Lucy turned and glanced at the man standing to their left. “And you are…?”

“Waiting for my beer.” The man shrugged.

“Then fuck off,” Lucy growled. “Nobody asked you.”

“It still sounds kind of complicated,” he said.

“Not nearly as complicated as framing a high-ranking federal agent for a series of really interesting felonies, but I pulled that off without a hitch,” she snapped. “Go drink your drink.”

“This is why I normally don’t discuss plans in crowded venues,” Hank offered.

“If people didn’t want to be creeped out and alarmed by my conversations, they wouldn’t be such nosy assholes,” Lucy said firmly, glaring at the man. He reluctantly took another two steps away. “So, what do you say? You gonna be a hero, or are you gonna be a buzzkill?”

“I’m going to go clear everything up with Hill, and then I’m putting a stop to this. Just so you know. I’m going to be a heroic buzzkill. This plan of yours? It’s not going to work. Not on my watch.”

“Yeah, we’ll see.” Lucy chuckled and looked out the window. “You should probably get going, though, because I think the two musketeers out there woke up.”

The tank rumbled to life.

“Oh, fuck me,” Hank gasped. “This isn’t over. I’ll see you in Vegas.”

He dashed out the door and jumped onto the tank as it lurched to life. Lucy shook her head and made her way back to the table.

“Okay, guys. We’re cleared for take-off, right? Pym’s going to take care of everything on the homefront. His and Jan’s wedding present, he said.”

“Wow. That’s really generous of them. I know they were looking forward to having some downtime this weekend,” Jane said happily, her eyes widening.

“True friendship,” Lucy told her. “You can’t really put a price on it, can you? That’s what I’ve been missing in my life lately.

“Indeed. True friends are to be cherished. We must make it up to them as soon as we return,” Thor murmured, taking Jane’s hand. Darcy elbowed Tony sharply, and he glared at her.

“The car will be here in just a few minutes,” he grunted.

“See? Everything’s coming together. It’ll be great.” Lucy plopped back into her chair. “Who’s paying the tab? We should pay the tab. Minutes count.”

“You are so weird,” Tony muttered.

“But your enthusiasm is much appreciated,” Thor said quickly.

“It’s probably just the LSD I dropped a few hours ago,” she said breezily.

“You what?” Tony put his head in his hands. “Of course you did.”

Jane and Darcy raised their eyebrows, and Lucy shook her head and mouthed ‘no’ at them. 

“You guys realize you have the exact same expression right now, right?” she asked, gesturing to her face. “Like, precisely the same. It’s a little disturbing.” Tony climbed past them to pay the bill, muttering darkly about irresponsible magicians. “Oh, like you’ve never gotten plastered and decided to go joyriding in that suit of mass destruction.”

“He has not done so in many months,” Thor said defensively. “Lady Pepper is most pleased with the improvement.”

“Well, then. I apologize for bringing it up,” Lucy told him. “Clearly, he’s turned over a new leaf.”


	82. Chapter 82

“I don’t understand how you manage to have luggage,” Lucy said, glancing down at the suitcase at Tony’s feet. “Where did you even _get_ that? You didn’t have it when we left the bar, and we didn’t stop anywhere. Do you just have python-skin suitcases stashed in random cabs all over the city? Did you rob a particularly flamboyant smuggler? Did you liberate it from a pimp on his way out of town? You know it’s against the rules to bring in baggage you didn’t pack yourself, right?”

“You know what I don’t understand? Why we even have to take my jet.” Tony crossed his arms and frowned at the tarmac. The rest of her questions went unacknowledged and unanswered. “Can’t you just, you know, _bamf_ us all there?”

Lucy pursed her lips, then frowned. “I’m, uh, not really...how do I put this? What the fuck does ‘bamf’ mean? Because I am not familiar with that particular term, and usually when you’re trying to say ‘magic,’ there’s a stupid swoopy wand-waving gesture or two to go along with it.”

“You know,” Tony sighed. He spread his arms and crooked his fingers. “ _Bamf_. That thing Kurt Wagner does.” 

“Who?”

“He’s one of the X-Men,” Darcy supplied. “Blue, furry, totally hot?”

“The science-guy that got smacked in the face with a Nair-cream pie at that climate change conference in Utah last week?” Lucy asked weakly. “You know, hitting people with folding chairs already has a name, and the sound that it makes isn’t ‘bamf.’ And you all usually complain when I do things like that. Like, a lot. And that’s not going to get us to Nevada.”

Jane shook her head. “No, that was Hank McCoy. Who is not, by the way, ‘totally hot.’” She tilted her head and thought for a moment. “He’s more...distinguished-looking. Maybe ruggedly handsome. Especially when he’s wearing his glasses and a suit and he looks like a mutant Indiana Jones.”

“That’s no way for an almost-married lady to talk,” Tony snorted. He glanced at Lucy. “He is ruggedly handsome, though. Or at least he was, and presumably will be again once that fur grows back.”

Thor frowned. “Why should Lady Jane’s marriage to me mean that she cannot admit to recognizing the handsomeness of another man?”

“Human insecurity, usually,” Lucy said. “Oh, and sexism. Institutionalized sexism.”

“Hey! I’m not--”

“Institutionalized,” Lucy repeated. “And also, you hire strippers as flight attendants. So maybe kind of yes you are. Anyway, none of which are among humanity’s better traits, Thor, so please ignore him when he says things like that. And I have it on good authority that, while it was period appropriate, Indiana Jones’s dynamite-and-guns-based archaeology was actually terrible practice.”

“No,” Tony said flatly. “You do not get to ruin Indiana Jones. Just shut your face.”

Lucy raised an eyebrow at Thor. “You gonna let him talk to me like that?”

“I confess that I’m unsure what you’re arguing about, but I have the utmost confidence in your ability to defend both yourself and your ideology,” Thor said mildly.

Darcy snorted. “Oooh. Adulthood _burn_.”

“I don’t think that’s a thing,” Lucy said, slouching back against a pillar. “You know, I was aware of the fact that there are roughly three thousand X-Men running around, but I’m not sure I’m mentally prepared for there being at least two of them that furry, blue, and good-looking all applies to. I’m pretty sure there’s a line somewhere that’s being crossed by that.”

“I seem to remember a certain magician fight that you ended by rerouting someone through a baggage claim,” Tony pointed out.

“And?”

“And, I’m just not sure you’re one to talk about lines being crossed. There are at least two magic-based villains running around with no sense of propriety, dignity, or appropriate consequences.”

“You know brontosauruses aren’t real, right?” Lucy asked, buffing her nails on her shirt.

“I hate you,” Tony sighed. “Which brings me back to the question of why you can’t just teleport us to Vegas instead of me having to spend several extra hours in your company.”

“Is that what bamfing is?”

“Yes. He makes a little noise when he teleports. It kind of sounds like, you know, _bamf_.”

“Huh.” Lucy chewed her lip. “I think I might owe him a couple of face-punches, then.”

“Seriously?” Tony groaned.

“Did you just put a hit out on an X-Man?” Darcy laughed. “Real-talk, Jones--don’t do anything terrible. Have mercy on your into-dudes sisters. He’s too pretty.”

“The X-Men are good people,” Thor said, frowning. “Most of the time. You must not go about pummeling them without good cause.”

“Didn’t you guys just pummel some of them last week?” Lucy asked.

“We had good cause to do so,” Thor replied. “But even so, it was most regrettable.”

“And the good cause was?” she prompted.

Thor shifted his weight from one foot to the other and glanced at Tony. Lucy laughed sharply and covered her mouth, trying to smother it. She dropped her hand once she’d arranged her expression into something more serious.

“You guys don’t get to lecture me about behavior until you can both remember why and agree on the reason you’re getting into slapfights with other heroes. Anyway, I’m pretty sure he threw a canister at my face a couple years ago. And then I got blamed for not doing a perimeter check, when I totally did, and also everybody knows not to trust me with perimeter checks when I’m stoned.”

“They do?” Tony asked.

“Yes,” Lucy said firmly, “they do. If we had a teleporter on our hands, that makes way more sense. And I can’t just teleport everybody to Vegas, because with the way my luck’s been running lately, I’d land us halfway through that stupid fake pyramid.”

“Could be worse,” Darcy pointed out.

“Oh?”

“They could have Indiana Jonesed a real pyramid and put it back up in Vegas,” Jane explained.

“There is not a relation between you and this destructive thief, is there?” Thor asked, his brows furrowing. “Perhaps you could persuade him to stop.”

“He’s fictional. Ish. I mean, he’s based on some guys--a lot of guys, actually--who kind of did it for real, but none of them are related to me and no more than would be statistically expected were named Jones,” Lucy explained. “How long does it fucking take to fuel a jet, Stark?”

“As long as it takes, because nobody wants to explode or crash on their way to Vegas,” Tony sniped. “It’s embarrassing when that happens.”

“I believe we’re upsetting the security personnel by speaking of crashes, friend Tony,” Thor sighed. “And smuggling. And theft.”

“Well, the security personnel probably shouldn’t be loitering in earshot of us, then,” Tony retorted, scowling at the handful of security agents. They glared back. “Superstitious and cowardly lot, indeed.”

“I was thinking more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Pretty sure Ponda Baba was on the other side of the bar when you had to stop for that scotch, and the amount of money they wanted for a vodka tonic was actual highway robbery.” Lucy looked around. “And everybody loitering around the peep-show scanners looks like sad Imperial non-coms who just want to make it through the day without their lack of faith being declared disturbing.”

“You’re thinking of Mos Eisley,” Tony said. “This is more Gotham.”

Lucy and Darcy both gave him a long look.

“What?” he demanded.

“Are you pretending to be Batman again?” Darcy asked.

“No,” Tony said quickly.

Lucy snickered.

“What?” Tony grunted.

“Nothing. I’m just trying to remember which issue of _Detective Comics_ involved Batman forgetting why he got into a brawl with the Teen Titans less than a week later.”

“Says the dork who knows who Ponda Baba is.” Tony scowled at her. “And I think the analogous group here with be Doom Patrol.”

“Except that there are like maybe twenty X-Men who are old enough to drive a car. You got into a fight with the Breakfast Club over something stupid enough that you don’t want to admit to it. The least you can do is cop to that much. And everybody knows who Ponda Baba is,” Lucy said. “That’s like the most famous cinematic barfight to go from zero to sixty ever. They just don’t know his name, necessarily.”

“I don’t know who you’re discussing,” Thor said.

“You haven’t seen _Star Wars_ yet?” Lucy asked.

“Indeed, I have not.”

“Jane, you’re failing in your fiancéely duty to acclimate this force of nature to the American way of life,” Tony sighed.

“Oh, shut up, Stark.” Lucy shook her head. “Jane, you should watch the original trilogy with him because it’s fun, not because you’re trying to indoctrinate him. Thor, you should watch the original trilogy with her because it’s fun. Don’t let Stark indoctrinate you. He’s pretty crap at it anyway, but still. Fight The Man.”

“I was under the impression that I was working for The Man?” Thor asked.

“Ehn. Debatable,” Lucy said.

“Definitely not,” Jane snapped. “I would have told you.”

“But Lady Darcy identified Agent Coulson as--”

“Oh, you’re friends with The Man. No question about that,” Lucy cut in. “You’ve definitely let The Man buy you a beer or two. I don’t know that you’re necessarily working for him. You ignore the playbook a little too much for that. Unlike _some people_ I could mention.”

Tony rubbed his eyes. “We’re on the same team. You understand that, right? That Thor and I are on the same exact team?”

“Depends on how you define team,” Lucy said.

“Yup,” Darcy agreed.

“You people are insane. You’re insane, and you’re going to wind up wanted for just as many felonies as she is if you don’t watch out, Lewis.”

“Hah,” Lucy and Darcy said in unison.

“Wait, why did you just laugh?” Darcy demanded. “I could totally commit just as many felonies as you have, if I wanted. More, even.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Lucy said smoothly. “I commit felonies just by walking around.”

“You do not.”

“I really do. It’s not up for debate or anything. Statement of fact.”

“She totally does. Now would you two please stop arguing loudly about all the felonies you have-slash-would commit in front of officers of the law,” Tony said brightly.

“There should be a law against that level of false cheer, you know that?” Lucy asked. “And they’re not, you know. Officers of the law. They have to call the real cops if they need anything done properly. They’re basically just mall cops.”

“I think they heard you,” Jane said quietly.

“I should hope so. They’d have had to be deaf not to have heard me.” Lucy reached for her cigarettes. “And you know what I really, really don’t like?”

“Mall cops?” Darcy asked.

“No smoking signs?” Tony sighed.

“Listening to good advice?” Thor chimed in.

“All of the above, but mostly sitting here for no reason. Looks like you’re jet’s finally got a pair of full tanks.” Lucy stretched and cracked her knuckles. “Also, shut up, Thor. Nobody in this group listens to good advice. It’s like the one thing we all have in common. Lewis and Foster chase aliens into the desert and throw rocks at doomsday devices and let me drive them places. Stark and you are self-explanatory. I’m standing here with all four of you. None of us do the good-advice thing.”

Tony picked up his bag and stalked down the corridor, giving the security staff a bright, toothy grin on the way past. “I love how you limit your own bad decisions to just hanging around us for the moment. You’re on ten different supervillains’ Christmas-pipebomb lists, and the evidence for you not listening to good advice is that you’re _here_.”

“I didn’t say anything about bad decisions, I said not listening to good advice. And, technically speaking, nobody ever said ‘Don’t piss off Fat Man or Molotov Cocktail or Jay Leno.’ What they said was ‘Here is a lot of money, go kick the following people in the junk and blow up their base.’ So I feel really comfortable with my previous statement.”

“Who comes up with some of these names?” Darcy groaned, shaking her head.

“The sort of people who have lists of recipients for holiday-themed bombs?” Jane reminded her.

“Oh, right.” Darcy’s eyes narrowed. “Does it count if you have two different lists, and one list gets the braggy, I-am-so-awesome-you-suck holiday letter in the dollar-store cards?”

“No, everybody does that,” Lucy said over her shoulder.

“Wait, they don’t blow up, right?” Jane asked.

“Only on social media,” Darcy said coolly.

“Then you’re good, I think. So long as they don’t literally explode, I don’t think it counts.” Jane sucked at her teeth. “But what if they do explode, but it’s not really a list because it’s only one person?”

“Who totally has it coming,” Darcy added. “If it’s the guy I’m thinking of.”

“It is.” Jane nodded.

“God, I hated that dude.”

Thor elbowed Lucy gently. 

“It would be most appreciated if you might weigh in on this,” he said quietly. “For good, rather than for ill.”

“Your girlfriend’s usually pretty good people,” Lucy told him. “I can only imagine if she’s mailing somebody an incendiary device once a year, he’s got it coming.”

“Consider it a contribution to the long and harmonious union,” he sighed.

“Fine,” she muttered. Raising her voice, she called back, “Stop bombing dudes, Foster. You never know when they might be on a grant committee.”

“Can we all stop having these conversations _really loudly_ in an _airport_ in the post-9/11 world?” Tony hissed from ahead of them.

*****

Lucy closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. There were moments, she thought, when she couldn’t believe this was her life and not a bizarre hallucination. Then there were moments like this, and it all made a sort of horrible, twisted sense. The sky was bright, the clouds were whispy and white, the flight was going smoothly, and then someone had gone and started _this_. 

“I still don’t see why you can’t perform the ceremony,” Jane protested. “Thor said you were kind of a religious figure.”

Lucy ran her fingers through her hair. “Oh my god, how do you even know about that?”

“Sif--”

“Knows about marriage laws on earth?”

“Said that you were the equivalent of a priest to some on this world,” Thor finished, frowning.

“How did that even come up?”

“She told me everything about your adventures together!”

“Ugh. She would.”

“She is my friend. And yours, if you’d permit it,” he said firmly.

“She wants to be my friend about like she wants to roll around in a fire ant mound,” Lucy scoffed.

“And fire ants are…?” Thor asked hesitantly.

“Exactly as bad as they sound,” Jane sighed.

“Of course they are.” Thor glanced up. “The fact remains, we would be honored if you would be our priest.”

“I am so much more than that, _but_ \--and this is the important bit--the government sort of has this policy where it doesn’t recognize cults until they’re pulling in a certain number of dollars per year in tithes and donations and bequests. Which my aunt’s cult is never going to, because hippies and burn-outs.” Lucy smiled apologetically, then clicked her tongue to ensure they knew she didn’t mean it. “So--”

“What if I joined your aunt’s cult?” Tony asked.

“Don’t do that,” Lucy said, her smile turning thin-lipped and hard. “I’m serious. If you do that, I will give you a hantavirus.”

“What is a hantavirus?” Thor asked.

“Yeah, what’s a hantavirus?” Darcy asked.

“Third time’s the charm. What the hell’s a hantavirus?” Tony chirped.

“You live in California, how do you not know that?” Lucy sighed. “It’s like a fucking retrovirus or some shit. It’s fatal. Do not even joke about joining that cult. The only reason I haven’t had to throw down with someone for real over that cult is because they can’t afford any serious artillery or ammo. You join and it’s just going to be that thing with the bats all over again except ten times worse.”

“You’re going to put a virus-whammy on me? Am I hearing that right? You’re going to magic-ebola me if I get you elevated to the official status of lady high-poobah of the eternal clusterfuck?” Tony asked.

“I was actually thinking more of just whapping you in the face with a sack full of infected feral rodents,” Lucy explained, lighting a cigarette. Darcy waved her hand in front of her face and coughed pointedly, and Lucy ignored her. “No magic required. Sometimes the old-fashioned way’s the best. Anyway. Thor, Jane. I’m touched by the request. I really am.” She chewed her lip. It wasn’t entirely a lie. “But it’s a bad idea. It could invalidate the whole thing, and I really would prefer my potential role as a religious authority be left out of this. Or left out of everything, forever. Bad things lie down that path. We’ll get you a justice of the peace. Or a properly-ordained Elvis. Something classy. I feel like sort of an asshole for not already knowing this, given how many times we almost got corpsed up the last time we hung out, but do you have any sort of religious preference, Jane?”

“For this right now? Not really. But, uh, could we not go the Elvis route? That just seems a little…tacky.” Jane’s face crinkled apologetically, and Lucy snorted.

“There’s no such thing as tacky when Elvis is involved, but sure. Lots of non-Elvis chapels in Vegas. Just so we don’t run into any weirdness once we’re there, neither of you’ve been married before, right? No intergalactic wedding-treaties? No drunken previous weekends in Vegas? No cohabiting for more than six months in Texas?”

“Wait, common-law kicks in after six months in Texas?” Darcy asked.

“Last time I checked. Not a lawyer, kids.” Lucy yawned. “Though I could have saved myself a lot of money if I was. Taxes and bail hearings are a pain in the ass, but they’re an even bigger pain in the bank account.”

“You’ve never let yourself get arrested,” Tony said. He paused, and his brows furrowed. “By normal police, I mean. Have you?”

“Not me, dumbass. I’ve spent a lot of time I’ll never get back convincing agents of the state to cut idiot coworkers loose.” Lucy leaned back and spread her arms across the top edge of the seats. She still remembered the look on the judge’s face when one of the idiots in question had shown up for a hearing dressed, not in the skirt-suit Lucy had picked out for her, but her costume. Her costume, which hadn’t been cleaned, and still had soot- and bloodstains all over it.

“Against their best interests, I might add,” Tony said.

“Never said it wasn’t.” She glanced around for an ashtray.

“Your lawyers probably didn’t point that out.”

“They’d have been pretty terrible lawyers if they had,” Lucy agreed. She gave up looking for a proper receptacle and snapped her fingers. The ash disappeared.

“Your legal rituals seem very confusing at times,” Thor murmured. Jane shrugged, and Darcy shot Lucy a dirty look.

“It’s a byproduct of political institutionalization,” Darcy said. “Six months?”

“Why are you acting like this is somehow my doing?” Lucy asked. “I used the time machine I stole purely for personal errands. I did not, in any way, interfere with the development of what passes for a legal system in Texas.”

“Oh my god, I forgot you even did that,” Darcy groaned.

“How could you forget she did that?” Tony demanded.

“Indeed,” Thor sighed, “it’s why we must secure the common fridge with padlocks now whenever Jan’s pet bird is at home, lest we return to find it attempting to incubate the hen’s eggs and the soft cheeses.”

“Padlocks aren’t going to help you for long. I swear, that bird’s evolving.” Lucy pulled out a bottle of champagne and popped the cork. “Who’s up for pre-gaming this wedding?”

“Where did you get that?” Tony sighed.

“Exactly where you think I got it,” Lucy chuckled.

“You’re stealing my champagne. Again.”

“Stealing’s such an ugly word. I much prefer looting.” She shook the bottle gently. “Anybody? It’s already open.”

“Fine, pass it around,” Tony grumbled. “There are flutes in the armrests.”

“I’m judging you for that, just so you know,” Darcy said.

“You want to judge him for anything, judge him for the stripper pole,” Lucy told her. “That thing’s a workplace hazard. OSHA needs to get involved. You hit turbulence in the middle of some poor stripper’s spin, and somebody could get maimed. All because you,” she pointed at Tony, “used cheap bolts to secure it.”

“I didn’t. Did I?”

“You did. Because sexism.”

“We’re back to that already?” Tony sighed.

“Pass it on the left, dude,” Darcy muttered, elbowing Tony.

“I’m being ganged up on on my own plane,” Tony grumbled, handing over the bottle.

“Don’t cheap out on employee equipment on your personal flying playboy mansion,” Darcy told him, pouring two glasses. She handed one to Jane and one to Thor, then poured one for herself.

“Nothing for me?” Tony protested.

“See previous statement.” 

She gave the bottle back, and Tony poured himself a glass. “Nothing for you, Susan B.?”

“The ringmaster getting drunk is how elephant rampages and tent fires happen,” Lucy said.

“Which you usually consider a bonus,” Tony pointed out.

“Not today. Today is all about getting you two hitched with a minimum of outside interference or Elvises. We’ve got a bride, a groom, and two witnesses. I’ve got a credit card with no limit. Vegas has no blue laws. We just need to successfully navigate that sucker, and we’re done. Happily ever after, here you two come.” She flicked her cigarette into nothingness and stretched, then laced her fingers behind her head. Jane’s hand slipped into Thor’s almost of its own accord, and Darcy hummed the wedding march.

“I can’t believe this is really happening,” Tony said.

“I can’t believe people really put you in charge of something worth money,” Lucy said, shrugging. “The world is full of mysteries. What’s our ETA?”

“We’re an hour out.”

Lucy nodded to herself. Due diligence was in order, here. “Let me borrow your phone. I’ve got a few people I want to warn off.”

“Your villain friends might want to pick a fight?” Tony asked, smirking. “Hey!”

She waved the phone at him and smiled triumphantly. 

“Asking was just a formality, bro.” She took a selfie and pulled up his contact list. “And no. Nobody who’s local is a bad enough dude to take a swing at me when I’m standing next to you two, assuming I’m not setting anything on fire at the time. Mostly they’re the sort of weasels who’d assume I was under arrest and would just watch it play out. But I’m thinking some of your hero friends might either want to rescue you or try to pitch in. And that, we don’t want. That’s the sort of thing that turns ugly with a quickness.” 

“Does it?” Thor asked. “I would think the more the merrier on this occasion.”

“Let’s save it for the after-party, huh?” Lucy suggested. “Chapels tend to get pretty mad if you start a power-fight on premises during the ceremony.”

“Still, it seems petty not to invite our comrades-in-arms on this day,” he sighed.

“No, look. You’re doing them a _favor_ ,” Lucy said. “Don’t give me that look, Stark. We are doing them a favor. You guys get properly married now, here, in this tiny little ceremony, and then you go back and you throw a huge public ceremony. Everybody’s there for the pomp and pageantry, all your friends get to see you repeat some really long and boring and personal vows about turkey legs and superscience and smiting, and nobody in the entire audience feels even the smallest amount of pressure to pick their bosses over your happiness or the least bit of politics-based ambivalence. They can just be happy for you.”

“Why would anybody feel politics-based ambivalence over this?” Tony asked, crossing his arms.

“Seriously?” Darcy groaned.

“Dude, we feel politics-based ambivalence over dirt-poor rice-farmers trading with neighboring dirt-poor bean-farmers if they skip the part where they use cash,” Lucy said. “We’re a very politically insecure people.”

“We do not,” Tony said.

“We do. The CIA’s been sent in for less,” Darcy told him.

“Listen to the nascent economic supervillain, Stark. She knows what she’s talking about.” Lucy frowned at his phone. “Incoming.”

She tossed it to him and spread her hands, her eyes going back to Thor and Jane. “I’m telling you, this will work out for the best. Present everyone with a fait accompli, and they can relax and just be happy for you instead of grudgingly killing the pastor and replacing him with a fake so that the marriage is secretly invalid because Fury needs an ace up his sleeve or something.”

“You have very little faith in our friends,” Thor grumbled.

“No, I have a huge amount of faith in your friends,” Lucy said, “to behave exactly like they always do. And I’m sure they’d feel very bad about it. You’re sparing them that. See, it’s selfless, really.”

Jane nodded slowly and shot Thor a quick look when he sighed.

“Do you have a secret lair on a private island in the Pacific?” Tony asked, frowning as he covered the mouthpiece.

“I...what?” Lucy asked.

“Do you have a secret lair on a private island in the Pacific?” he repeated slowly, irritated. “Somebody named ‘Ultimatum’ wants to negotiate a surrender in order to get off it without further casualties.”

Lucy stared at him, trying to make sense of what he was saying. “They what?”

“Want to negotiate a surrender in order to get off it without further casualties. Should I tell them they’re trying to reach MODOK instead? Or HYDRA? Or Nick Fury’s travel agent?”

“ULTIMATUM is calling _your_ phone to ask _me_ if they can…” Lucy broke off and started laughing. “Oh my god. Oh my fucking god. Give me the phone. I think I know what’s going on.”

“You have a secret island lair?” Darcy demanded, her eyebrows climbing. She looked at Jane and Thor. “I guess you guys don’t need to worry about booking a spot for the honeymoon, then.”

“Darcy!” Jane scolded. “Did you miss the part about the presumed automated anti-intruder systems?”

“Well, I can only hope that my sister would provide the access codes to disable them if she were to permit us to stay there,” Thor said.

“Shut up, everybody,” Lucy snapped, waving at them. “I have to make this convincing.”

*****

Tony looked around at the chapel and frowned. Jane and Thor were deep in conversation with the minister, and Darcy was poking at the floral arrangements. Lucy was sprawled out in the back pew. He stalked over to her and flopped down.

“Is she going to accidentally turn off your illusions?”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “Nope. It’s killing you that this is actually kind of nice, isn’t it?” 

“A little. I still can’t quite believe you were going to pay for it with my credit card,” he groused. “You said it was on you!”

“No, I said I had a card with no limit. Didn’t say it was mine.” She shrugged. “Now it’s on ULTIMATUM. Hooray, the system works.”

“So, you have an island death-trap.”

She snorted. “I have five square miles of bupkis.”

“Do international terrorist organizations routinely ransom themselves out of problems with bupkis for millions of dollars?” Tony asked.

“There’s a reason you’ve never heard of ULTIMATUM,” Lucy chuckled. “They are just _so_ unbelievably bad at their jobs. I mean, you think AIM’s kind of incompetent? Don’t get me wrong--they are kind of incompetent--but ULTIMATUM is just so much worse. They make those bee-suit-wearing bastards look like James Bond. The only reason they’re still around is that they rob federal reserves or steal really expensive things when they need to make payroll. They don’t even aspire to be self-sustaining. It looks like they can’t afford something, boom, they steal it.”

“So, what, they were losing people to hermit crabs? Maybe the seagulls decided to defend their turf?” he asked, bristling.

“The island started life as an atoll. The previous occupant filled in the central body of water. It’s like a perfect circle now. They went in with their usual tactics, which is pretty much to surround an opponent on all sides and rush in with guns blazing. You ever hear the phrase ‘circular firing squad’?” Lucy grinned as Tony’s expression slid into blank disbelief. “They were losing people to their other people.”

“They weren’t.”

“They were. I bought that place back when I was thinking of settling down, maybe going all Doctor Strange. I ripped out the auto-defense murder-systems and auctioned them off to pay off the loan I took out to buy the island. There’s nothing there but a couple of big water tanks, a solar generator, and a charming little tiki shack.”

“So when you made them fork over two million bucks and told them that if they fired another bullet on the island, they were dead men…”

“Well, they would have been. I mean, you’re in a shootout with yourself, and somebody breaks the cease-fire, you’re right back to shooting yourselves in the face.” Lucy shrugged.

“But two million dollars--”

“The no-trespassing signs _were_ clearly posted,” she said.

“They’re going to be mad when they find out.” Tony ran his fingers through his hair and tried not to grin. “Two million dollars to stop shooting at each other.”

“They’re already mad, because they think I carved them up like a bunch of Christmas hams,” Lucy told him. “And then I took their money and sent them home with their tails between their legs. They find out it was a trick, they might get slightly more angry, but they’re probably going to want to keep it on the down-low. I mean, it’s kind of a morale-killer to find out that you suck so bad you don’t even need enemies to rack up a twenty-percent mortality rate.”

“Fury’s going to bust a gut when I tell him about this,” Tony said.

“You tell Fury about this, I’m telling Fury about the time you let JARVIS day-trade.” Lucy flexed her fingers, and the illusory flowers Darcy was examining shook and disgorged an illusory bee. It tested its wings briefly before taking to the air and flying to another patch of flowers. Darcy made a little high-pitched noise and clapped her hands.

“Did you just do something incredibly cute for Darcy while simultaneously threatening to blackmail me?” he groused.

“I think I just blackmailed you. I mean, there wasn’t a lot of wiggle-room there,” Lucy said. “You tell Fury about this, I’m telling him that. It’s not like I’m sending you a note about what I’ll do if I don’t get my money, and then the note gets lost in the mail.”

“But that never happened,” he protested.

“But it’s the sort of thing that Fury totally thinks you’d do, so it won’t matter that it’s a lie,” she reminded him.

“You’re the worst sometimes,” Tony groaned. He sank back into the sparse padding of the pew. “What the hell is with these flowers, anyway?”

He gestured at the floor-to-ceiling racks of glittering, shifting flowers and vines. A half-dozen spice finches flitted from branch to branch, and a hummingbird moth hovered in front of Darcy’s face before darting up to one of the higher blossoms.

“I was raised on Merry Melodies and did a lot of hallucinogens later on in life.” Lucy smiled. “And Jane thinks they’re pretty, so you can fuck off.”

“They are. They’re just really...ornate. Detailed. I wouldn’t have thought you’d have the attention span for something like this.”

Lucy stuck out her tongue at him and then sent a small flock of butterflies tumbling through the air over Jane and Thor. Jane grinned, and Thor beamed at her and threw Lucy a grateful look.

“Why are you really doing this?” Tony asked softly.

“Esoteric reasons of my own which are no concern of yours because we share a common cause here,” she said, letting her head fall back to rest on the edge of the bench.

“And that is?” he snorted.

“Get them married, make them happy, don’t let SHIELD ruin this for them.”

“Pretty big assumption that that’s my goal here, isn’t it?” Tony sighed.

“Not really.” She straightened up a little and looked at him more closely. “You really are their friend. I mean, you hide it pretty well, with the Captain Asshole act, but you _do_ like them, and you _do_ want them to be happy, and you _do_ think SHIELD sucks just as often as they’re on the side of the angels. Not to mention that if they can pull this off and make it work, it gives you some hope for whatever it is you’ve got going on with your hot redhead.”

Tony frowned. “You know, I think I liked you better when you were just a dangerous drunk.”

“I’m still a dangerous drunk?” she offered.

“Is this you being comforting?” he groaned.

“Before you complain about this, you should get Coulson to tell you about the time Wasp tried to set me up to rescue him,” Lucy said. 

“And you didn’t?”

“Oh, no. I did.” Lucy drummed her fingers on the back of the pew.

“How horrible was it?”

“Really, really horrible,” she sighed. “So horrible, I’m a little ashamed of myself over it now. But on the bright side, you guys’ policies and procedures got tightened up a lot, and there haven’t been any repeats.”

One of the butterflies settled on Tony’s nose.

“Ow. Why are its feet so pointy, Jones?” he demanded, swatting at it. The insect flapped its wings and flew off, and his hand passed through it. “Did you just weaponize these bugs?”

“Their feet are pointy. They are, as you so helpfully pointed out, bugs. It feel like a bug walking on you?”

“Yes, it felt like a bug a bug walking on me.” Tony rubbed his nose. “That’s exactly what it felt like.”

“Verisimilitude achieved,” she said, smiling. 

“But it’s a _butterfly_ ,” he groused.

“It’s still a bug, Stark.”

Thor and Jane looked up from the clipboard in front of them, and Darcy stood on her tiptoes to look over Jane’s shoulder.

“You guys ready to get this show on the road?” Tony called.

“Indeed, friend Tony!” Thor answered happily. Jane nodded.

“Hey, Jones, will your stuff show up on camera?” Darcy asked.

“Yup.”

“Awesome,” Darcy said to herself. She pulled out her phone and did a slow sweep of the room.

“Sounds like you’re up, Stark.” Lucy clapped him on the back. “Go be the best man everyone always assumed you wouldn’t be and don’t fuck up this wedding.”


	83. Chapter 83

Lucy leaned against the wall and rubbed her eyes. The sun was beating down, and she regretted having ducked out into the back alley instead of loitering around the front lobby the second she got a whiff of the dumpsters. Rotting flowers and rancid buttercream, she thought. How appropriate. Of course, she’d slipped out the back because she’d needed a few minutes alone, and the lobby had an ever-present phalanx of professionally cheerful employees who asked questions like whether she was with the bride or the groom. She lit a cigarette more to cover the smell than anything else and crammed herself into the sliver of shade cast by a rooftop sign.

There was something about the way Jane and Thor kept beaming at her that was getting under her skin and making her _itch_. Darcy was suitably distracted by the preparations, and Stark was wallowing in mistrust and weird, thinly-veiled jealousy. They weren’t much of a balance, though, and she could feel the weight of expectation settling on her shoulders. Thor was happy to accept this as another step toward a reconciliation. That she was being kind without an obvious ulterior motive was a relief instead of cause for suspicion. He was simply pleased that she was helping, pleased that she seemed to approve of Jane, pleased that she was there.

It wasn’t enough to make her reconsider the wisdom of her plan, but it was enough to make her wish she’d stopped for a few more minutes to consider the emotional ramifications. She could have at least been prepared for them.

Lucy lifted the cigarette to her lips and then cracked her knuckles. They’d be ready to go soon. The faster the ceremony was over and done with, the faster she could slink off, find Hill, and do some quality grandstanding. Something flashy and pompous enough to plump her cred and annoy the Asgardians in one go. She rebraided her hair and straightened her clothes before deciding that a nice suit was more appropriate for the occasion. She did, after all, have something of an image to maintain.

“Show time,” she muttered to herself, taking a deep breath. If she could project an aura of cool authority in the face of a dozen bio-lab breakouts from things that might have crawled from the depths of hell, she could refrain from snapping at Thor for half an hour. She just needed another few minutes without having to put that to the test.

Lucy walked down the alley, turned right, and frowned. She turned slowly, made her way back to the chapel’s back door, and let herself in. One of the flower girls glanced up at her.

“Kind of hot out, huh?” she asked. 

“Yeah, you could say that,” Lucy replied, thinking quickly.

“You know you still can’t smoke in here, though, right?”

“What? Oh. Sure.” Lucy snapped her fingers, and the cigarette vanished. “Um, this is going to sound like a weird question, but here goes. I don’t suppose there’s any reason you know of that this chapel would have like a million fucking Department of Energy agents converging on it right now?”

The girl straightened up, her eyes going wide. “Seriously?”

“Well, it’s not a hypothetical question, no.”

“Fuck this. I’m out of here.” The girl brushed past Lucy on her way out the fire door.

“Is that a yes?” Lucy asked.

“No, that’s an ‘I don’t want a repeat of the time the Fat Elvises got into a throwdown with the Beatles impersonators.’ That was a nightmare. They can dock my pay if they want, but I’m not sitting through something like that again.” She shook her head fiercely and leaned on the push-bar.

“I have to assume, though I can’t really speak to this from personal experience, that federal agents are going to be slightly more professional than two rival gangs of musical imposters,” Lucy called after her. The door slammed, and she sighed. She hadn’t done anything to specifically annoy that particular department, which only left...the entire rest of the party as prospects. Damn it all.

She swept into the main hall and down the aisle, a fake smile tacked onto her face.

“Hey, Father, can I borrow the best man for a minute?” Lucy asked, throwing her arm around Tony’s neck. Darcy and Jane gave her questioning looks, and Thor cocked his head.

“For the last time, young lady, I am a minister, not a priest,” the man sighed. “And yes, you may borrow the best man. Please have him back in five minutes, though. We’re almost ready to begin.”

“Great, will do, thanks!” she said, steering Tony down the aisle. “Okay, before I ask Mr. Minister back there if he can Spaceballs this ceremony, is there a particular reason you can think of that the parking lot and all conveniently adjacent alleys are now crawling with government dudes in cheap suits?”

“Um, well. There’s you,” he pointed out.

“First, they’re not wearing nearly enough body armor to be here for me. Second, I actually locked eyes with one of the fuckers, and she didn’t really register much recognition there. So, not me.”

“I thought you said this wasn’t going to happen,” Tony hissed. He looked over his shoulder and waved brightly at Thor. Lucy guided him farther out of earshot and shook her head.

“No, I said this is what we were trying to keep from happening.” Lucy frowned. “I don’t recall having promised that it wouldn’t. Though I might have. I mean, I did say a lot of shit to talk them onto your plane.”

“Did you catch who they’re with?” Tony asked, fishing a bracelet out of his pocket. “I’ve got a spare suit in the rectory, and I’m guessing you’re as okay with senseless acts of physics-defying violence as ever. You know, just in case they’re not actually from an agency that wants to hug it out.”

“Department of Energy.” Lucy made a face. “And government agencies never want to hug it out, Stark. You’re thinking of individual agents, and that was probably just an excuse to cop a feel.”

“Agent Awkward-hugs would never do something like that,” Tony snorted. “Seriously, though, can’t you go terrify one of them into showing you a warrant? If I know what this is about, I can probably just talk them down and sic the lawyers on their bosses.”

“I’m busy keeping the floral arrangements intact,” she said, shrugging. “And honestly? I don’t know how to read warrants.”

“How do you not know how to read a warrant? You’re, um, _you_.” Tony paused and glanced toward the rectory. One of the attendants shot them a practiced, plastic smile, and they stared at him. “Wow, they are really bad at that. I feel less welcomed and joyous and more like I’ve gotten stranded in the middle of a Disney ride full of old animatronics. Do you think we should try this again at a higher-rent place?”

“I imagine they’d be more convincing if they were better-paid,” Lucy said. “And honestly, they’ve been really sweet to Jane and Thor, which is what matters. And also the thing about warrants is that I always take the opportunity presented by somebody trying to show me one to suckerpunch them or create a diversion. So I’ve never sat down and read one of the damn things, per se. And anybody who’s ever tried to arrest me a few times knows it’s going to happen, so they’ve sort of given up on it.”

“I wonder if this is about the giant arc reactor I built without a permit,” he muttered.

Lucy turned to stare at him. “You think? Why would you even _do_ that?”

Tony stared back at her, perplexed. “Because I needed energy. Why else would I have done that?”

“I meant the without-a-permit part,” she clarified, putting her hand to her forehead. “I mean, you’re rich as fuck. You have a fleet of employees. How hard could it have possibly been to get a permit?”

“The guy who’s secretary now hates me. We’re talking with a fire of a thousand suns levels of hatred. I’d never have gotten a permit. He’s personally blackballed me for life, or at least until the next guy comes in.” Tony adjusted some settings on the bracelet and grimaced.

“That doesn’t sound like Dr. Moniz. That guy’s like Secretary Grandpa. What the hell did you do to make him hate you?” Lucy demanded.

Tony paused. “Okay, so you _know_ the secretary, and you still think there’s no way they could be here because of you. Have you met you? Because you can be very abrasive.”

“I don’t _know_ him. I met him once, and he was an unbelievably good sport about the whole regrettable incident--”

“I’m genuinely not hearing a ‘they’re not here for me’ in this,” Tony interrupted.

“--but there is absolutely, positively no way he could possibly be here for me,” Lucy ground on, glaring at him, “because I was masquerading as a certain former presidential candidate at the time, so any lingering ill-will over the whole thing would be directed elsewhere.” Lucy pursed her lips. “Wait, when did you graduate from MIT again?”

“Never mind,” Tony said quickly, frowning. “Let’s just assume they’re here for me, okay?

“I think that’s a pretty safe assumption at this point.” Lucy snagged a mint from one of the bowls and popped it into her mouth. “How did they even know where you were, though?”

“Do you not remember texting everybody in town from my phone, or do you just not understand that actions have consequences?” Tony sighed. “Because the latter would explain a few things.”

“Shit. Right. Whoops.”

“Sorry, were you reveling in the idea of this being someone else’s fault for once? Did I step on that?” Tony asked.

“Things going wrong usually isn’t my fault, Stark,” she snapped.

“What’s going wrong?” Darcy asked, popping her gum. 

Tony and Lucy turned to see her standing a few feet away, her hands clasped behind her back.

“Nothing,” Lucy said.

“It’s just a little glitch. Everything’s under control,” Tony blurted.

“Really? ‘Cuz you guys were having an awful loud argument for either ‘nothing’ or ‘a little glitch.’ I mean, you guys know I’ve actually had arguments about little glitches, right?” Darcy chirped, smiling at them. “And that there are these things called inside-voices?”

“Why is she showing so many teeth, Jones?” Tony asked.

Lucy blinked at him. “How do you not know what that look means? Your girlfriend has that look in two thirds of your publicity photos.”

“So, you guys are going to fix this, right?” she prompted.

“Um, Stark is going to fix it.”

“I’m what?”

“Right now, actually. And I am going to come with you and make sure that him fixing it doesn’t actually make things worse. It’s a Vegas wedding chapel. I’m sure they’ve got a really short version for emergencies.” Lucy took her by the elbow.

“Do we have an actual plan, or am I just going to wing it?” Tony called after them.

“Wing it,” Lucy said flatly. “I’m pretty sure Jane and Thor don’t need to know he’s winging it, Lewis.”

“We’ve barely been here two hours,” Darcy told her.

“Yes, I know.”

“And you were being so good!” she continued.

“I still am,” Lucy pointed out. “This is really not me!”

“You’re going to have to be the best man now. You know that, right?” Darcy paused to snatch the bouquet off the back pew.

“I...shit. I am, aren’t I? Fuck.”

Darcy nodded. Thor cocked his head when he noticed them returning.

“Where has Tony gotten off to?” he asked, frowning.

“Um, something’s come up. He’s taking care of it right now. In the meantime, just as a precaution,” she flashed a wide grin at the minister, “what’s your record for fastest wedding ever performed?”

“Sixty-five seconds,” he said, his expression indicating that he was in no hurry to repeat the experience.

“How’s about we try breaking it?” Lucy suggested. Jane and Thor both sighed. “Wow. That relationship hivemind is really kicking in, isn’t it?”

“She’s joking. Just so you know,” Darcy broke in, bumping her pointedly with her hip. She shoved the flowers into Jane’s hands. “We should get you two married like, _right now_ , but doing it in literally under a minute’s hardly necessary. Right?”

“Right. Ha! Little joke. Um.” Lucy drummed her fingers against her thighs. “Seriously, though. Quickly.”

“We cannot have a ceremony without a best man,” Thor said. “It is one of the oldest traditions, according to Tony.”

Darcy tipped her head at Lucy, who straightened her shoulders. “Yeah, it’s looking like I’m stepping in there.”

“Are we sure Tony doesn’t need help dealing with the...thing?” Jane asked. “We can put this off if he needs help.”

The minister muttered something under his breath and began sifting through his papers. He waved to a knot of attendants, and they fell into place with an efficient boredom that Lucy found herself envying. She was personally feeling an unexpected bout of nerves.

“Helping Tony right now actually wouldn’t be helping him,” she explained quickly. “You know. It’s just one of those things he has to work out for himself. Like why climbing into bed with reporters, or senators, or snipers is not the best of ideas.”

“What life-lesson is he learning, exactly?” Darcy asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I think it’s why we apologize for the things we did as punk kids who wind up at college well before we’re emotionally mature enough to handle that sort of independence.” Lucy shrugged. “Probably a lesson he’s overdue for, really.”

“We’re ready if you are,” the minister sighed. “Places, if you please?”

Darcy fell in next to Jane, and Lucy stepped to Thor’s right. A quick rattle of gunfire startled the organist into missing her notes, and the minister gave the ceiling a persecuted look.

“Well, then,” he murmured. He cleared his throat and looked from one to the other. “Do you?”

“Yes.” Jane reached out and took Thor’s hand.

“Do you?”

“Verily.” Thor took her other hand.

“The rings?”

Lucy took one and handed it to Thor. Darcy took the other and handed it to Jane. Thor slipped Jane’s ring onto her finger, then held still while she slid his on in turn.

“I now pronounce you man and wife,” the minister said, nodding. “If you’ll all sign the paperwork before kissing the bride? The last time there was a gunfight this close to the lobby, it didn’t end well.”

“You can still do forcefields, right?” Darcy asked.

“Sure, why not?” Lucy sighed.

“Then we’ve got time for a kiss,” Darcy said firmly.

Jane leaned in, blushing, and Thor bent his head to brush his lips across hers. Lucy shifted her weight from one foot to the other, waiting for some sign that Tony was in over his head. If Thor went barreling off to help him before he signed the license, the whole thing was null and void. Darcy glared at her around them, and she frowned.

“What?” she mouthed.

Darcy looked meaningfully at the illusory flowers and birds decorating the hall. Lucy suppressed a sigh and concentrated. A lush crown of flowers settled on their heads, and vines looped around their shoulders, the flowers blossoming as they kissed. Darcy gave her a thumbs-up, and Lucy rolled her eyes.

A muffled explosion made them all jump, and Lucy let the illusions fade in favor of reinforcing the building.

“Okay, so how about that paperwork?” Darcy asked, producing a handful of pens.

“The bride and the groom sign first. Then you two, as witnesses.” The minister nodded to Lucy and Darcy.

“And after that, we’re good?” Lucy asked.

“Well, there’s the matter of filing it with the proper officials within the set time period, but we’ll take care of that,” the minister assured her. Jane and Thor signed, trading broad smiles as they did so.

“Or we could just magic it into their hands as soon as the ink is dry, right?” Darcy asked, scrawling her signature across the witness’s line.

“We?” Lucy echoed. Darcy crossed her arms. “Or, yes, we could just magic it into their hands as soon as the ink is dry. Yup. That is what’s happening here. Stop baring your teeth, Lewis.”

Lucy glanced over the license, then added her own jagged, sloping signature to the appropriate space. The minister stamped it, signed his name, and nodded to himself.

“Done and done,” he announced. A slow, ominous rumble sounded from the street, and he shook his head. “None too soon, apparently. Janine, did you happen to time that one?”

“Not even in the top ten,” the organist called back.

“Are you two okay?” Jane asked, her brows furrowing as she glanced from Darcy to Lucy.

“Indeed, you are being most strange, even considering your normal comportment,” Thor agreed.

Darcy smiled and looped her arm through Lucy’s. “We’re just so happy for you!”

“Uh, yeah. We’re overcome with emotion. You guys are going to...continue to be so happy together.” Lucy fished Tony’s credit card out of her pocket. “You two should go check yourselves into a honeymoon suite in the least embarrassing hotel you can find. We’ll get Stark out of this.”

“And get that license where it needs to go,” Darcy added.

“And get that license where it needs to go,” Lucy agreed.

“It would be inauspicious to--” Thor began, his eyes going to the front doors.

“It would be inauspicious to interrupt your first hour together to go fight some poor schmucks over a childish misunderstanding,” Lucy cut in. “Trust me on this one. Have I ever steered you wrong?”

Thor raised his eyebrows.

“Question retracted,” she said. “Seriously, though, just this once. Leave everything to me and Lewis. You and Foster go hunker down somewhere and be giddily happy that no one can stop true love. Okay?”

“You call if you need us,” Jane said, looking Darcy dead in the eye. “You call if you _think_ you need us. Deal?”

“Deal,” Darcy said, extending her hand. Jane shook it, then blushed when Darcy turned her hand over to inspect the ring. “Look at you, all married!”

“I would tell you to call if you need us, but you have not taken to carrying a phone again, have you?” Thor sighed. 

Lucy produced Tony’s phone with a small flourish. “I can call in an airstrike if I need it, apparently. Go, take Jane, enjoy yourselves. We’ll handle everything here. You can take off from the rooftop.”

“Rooftop access is employees-only,” the organist said sternly.

“We’re sorry in advance,” Lucy called, waving. “Go. Have fun.” She turned to Darcy. “Lewis, can you make sure they go and have fun? I’m going to go take a look at what Stark’s dealing with.”

“No, you’re going to see that this license gets where it needs to go, then you’re going to look for Tony.” Darcy tapped the paper.

“You’re being awfully bossy for someone I can turn into a frog,” Lucy pointed out.

“You can turn people into frogs?” the minister asked, looking up from his appointment book. “Janine, could you please take this lovely couple up to the roof? I’d hate to inconvenience them any more than this regrettable affair already has.”

Jane pulled Darcy and Lucy into a hug, and then the three of them were crushed even closer by Thor’s arms. He stepped back and rested his hand on Lucy’s shoulder as everyone broke apart.

“I am most grateful for this,” he said softly, smiling at her. “I will not forget what you’ve done for us today.”

“Happy to have been of service,” she mumbled, catching the look Darcy was shooting her as she rubbed her side. “What?”

“You have _really_ bony elbows,” Darcy told her.

“Well, I didn’t mash them into you on purpose,” Lucy snapped. “Can you two just get going before anything terrible happens? I can see the odds building as we speak. This town doesn’t like a lucky streak.” She gestured to the waiting organist. “And Janine probably doesn’t have all day. Right, Janine?”

“Not without cutting into my lunch break,” Janine said blandly. “So, what’s it like, being able to fly?”

Lucy relaxed as the pair were led away toward the stairs, and Darcy pointed sharply to the license.

“Come on, all this is for nothing if something happens to that paper,” she urged.

“Right, right. Where am I sending this thing, again?” Lucy sighed.

“The address in the right-hand corner.” The minister chewed his lip and watched as the paper vanished. “You know, if you ever get tired of superheroing...”

“I’m not a superhero,” Lucy corrected. “It’s a sucker’s game, it doesn’t pay for shit, and I’m psychologically poorly-suited to solve other people’s problems on a regular basis.”

“Well, then.” The minister rubbed his chin. “There’s a lucrative business opportunity in making literal fairytale weddings happen.”

“Like, turn the groom into a frog, turn him back when the bride kisses him? That sort of thing?” Darcy asked.

“Precisely,” the minister said, nodding. “Hell, the amount people would pay just to have a flock of bluebirds carrying the bride’s train as she walks down the aisle. Do you have any idea what Disney rakes in for their non-magical version of the re-enactments?”

“Put me down as both appalled and intrigued,” Lucy snorted. “I’ll pick up a card on the way out of the lobby.”

“But this sounds like the best job ever,” Darcy protested.

Lucy rubbed her temples. “Have you read any fairytales?”

“You just massacred a bunch of mercenaries on an island you don’t even care about,” Darcy pointed out. “Putting someone in a temporary coma at their own request for a lot of money shouldn’t be that much of a stretch.”

“If I admit that you can make a persuasive argument in favor of this scheme, will you drop it for a few minutes so that we can go make sure Stark isn’t doing anything terrible enough to disrupt them for the next few hours at least?” she asked.

“Yeah, we kind of did promise we’d take care of that, didn’t we?” Darcy grumbled. “Do you think we could get away with just getting a burger and shake across the street and making sure this doesn’t get too out of hand? I’m really hungry.”

“There’s a complimentary buffet in the back,” Lucy told her.

“As someone who’s basically invulnerable to mortal weapons, would you eat at a complimentary buffet in Vegas?” she asked.

“That’s not technically the case, and no, even if it was, I wouldn’t.”

“Then I want a burger and a shake.”

Lucy tucked the minister’s proffered card into her pocket and fell into step next to Darcy.


	84. Chapter 84

Darcy slurped her shake and looked out the window. “I’m not entirely sure this is helping.”

“And I’m not entirely sure what the point of a chocolate-vanilla swirl milkshake is, yet here we are,” Lucy sighed, flipping through the menu. “Trust me, this is helping.”

“How? And I swear to god, _just pick something_. You’ve been looking at that menu for like ten minutes straight. It’s a Steak ‘n Shake. Even if you magic it so it says something else, they’re still not going to make it for you.” Darcy pushed her glasses back up and glared at her. “Oh, and the point of a chocolate-vanilla swirl milkshake is that some of it’s chocolate, and some of it’s vanilla, and if you drink it before it all melts together and gets gross anyway, it’s a flavor medley in your mouth.”

“Chocolate and vanilla is not a medley. Calling chocolate and vanilla a medley is an abuse of the term ‘medley.’ What time is it?”

Lucy scanned the street again, her expression turning sour. The situation was out of hand, but not as out of hand as she’d have liked. A few of the Department of Energy’s goons still looked like they knew what was going on.

“Check your phone.”

“It’s Stark’s phone. And you’ve got your phone out,” Lucy said. “It’s right there. In your hand.”

She tossed the menu down and crossed her arms. Darcy ignored her for a few seconds, her phone clicking away as she took pictures.

“Are you planning to give it back?” Darcy asked blandly.

“Not really,” Lucy admitted. “How many llama-pics do you really need?”

“All of them,” Darcy said firmly. “Llamas are adorable, and I don’t get that many opportunities to take pictures of them. And if you’re not giving it back, it’s your phone now. Why do you need to know what time it is, anyway? Have we got somewhere we need to be?” 

“The Iron Man impersonators I hired are late,” she said. “Which is just fucking typical, isn’t it? But still. The rate I’m paying them for an emergency gig, they should be on time.”

Everyone was in place except for the decoys. It was irritating to have an otherwise-flawless plan hinge on the punctuality of a pack of Tony Stark impersonators.

“You hired a bunch of guys in costumes to come get shot at by the feds? That’s low, even for you,” Darcy said, frowning. She finished the last of her shake.

Lucy shrugged. “I changed their bullets for blanks on our way across the street. They’d have to get somebody from extremely close range to do anything. Which I don’t think they’re going to accomplish, because even if they were a strike group, which they’re not, there’s an extremely confused petting zoo in between them and their targets.”

“Nobody puts llamas in petting zoos. They bite. And spit. And kick. And if you changed the bullets for blanks, why is Tony still fighting with them?”

“Well, for one thing, he has a very confrontational personality. For another, it doesn’t count as fighting if you’re hovering two stories off the ground behind convenient awnings and outcroppings while yelling that this is all a mistake and you want to talk to their superiors. And also, I didn’t tell him I swapped the live ammo for blanks.”

“Lucy!” Darcy scolded.

“What? I don’t have the number for his suit,” she said defensively. She leaned back in the booth and watched a Shetland pony trot past with a red panda on its back.

“Not _that_! There is a _condor_ out there. You put it back where you found it right now. There are only like ten of them left!” Darcy looked genuinely distressed as she pointed to a large vulture perched on a van’s luggage rack.

Lucy craned her neck, then looked from the bird to Darcy and back to the bird. “That is a turkey vulture, Lewis.”

“No way. It’s huge!” Darcy shook her head and swiped through her phone’s apps. “I’m looking this up.”

“It’s just, like, turkey vulture-sized,” Lucy protested, at a loss. “I don’t know what shrinky-dink turkey vultures you’ve seen in the past, but I assure you, that is a perfectly normal size for them to be. I had one bigger than that camped out on my back porch the last time I threw a barbecue. There is nothing abnormal about the size or coloration of that vulture.” She drained half her glass of water and side-eyed the menu again. “I totally wouldn’t want to be in that agent’s shoes in a minute, though. She keeps trying to get it out of the way, it’s going to barf on her.”

“What?” Darcy didn’t look up from her phone.

“They barf on you if you upset them,” she explained. “There’s a reason I just let a carrion-bird hang out on my house during a social gathering involving food.”

The vulture had capitalized on it, into the bargain. A guest from the DEA had tried to shoo it away from her baby back ribs and gotten warned off with vague horking noises and chest heaving. It still stood out as one of the worst parties she’d ever thrown.

“Ew.” Darcy wrinkled her nose. “Fine, you’re right, that’s totally a turkey vulture. I really feel like we should be calling someone or arranging for bail instead of just flooding the street with weirdness.”

Their waitress appeared and refilled Lucy’s water. “Have you decided what you’d like?”

“Could I have another couple of minutes?” Lucy asked.

“She’ll have the BLT, with extra everything,” Darcy said. “Like, just charge us for two BLTs and put all the filling in one sandwich. One side of fries, one side of coleslaw. And two shakes, one banana and one orange. The banana one’s for me. And do you know when my burger’s going to be ready? I’m starving.”

Lucy raised an eyebrow, and Darcy smiled sharply.

“Should just be another couple of minutes,” the waitress chirped. “I’ll get those shakes right out for you.”

“I’ll have the BLT?” Lucy asked.

“Yup. See how easy that was?”

“With extra everything?”

“Unless you snuck in lunch while you were out having a smoke break, you missed breakfast, too. And you’ve got an even higher metabolism than Jane does. You’re like a human locust. So there.” Darcy stuck out her tongue. “Bail money?”

Lucy ran the odds in her head before scoffing.

“If Stark makes it to jail on anything serious, he’s not getting out. He’s got more money than god, property all over the globe, a wearable jet, and roughly three dozen countries that would offer him citizenship in exchange for weapons designs. And it would take him about three seconds to make a tracking bracelet worse than useless. A judge would have to be ten kinds of on the take to grant bail for someone posing that kind of literal flight risk,” she explained. “Not to mention that he’s got a herd of lawyers on call for precisely this sort of occasion. Which is why helping, in this case, means nerfing their guns and making it so that their field reports sound like they’re all on drugs.”

“Oh.” Darcy deflated a little. “Is that what this is all about? The drones playing club music and the midget wrestler dressed like Darth Vader on the alpaca are just to make their testimony seem completely unreliable?”

“Well, the wrestler’s just some dude who saw his shot and took it,” Lucy said, spreading her hands. “Fuck if I know where he came from, but more power to him. The only people I hired to show up are the Iron Man impersonators, that first bunch of tourists filming the whole thing on their phones, and a squad of bachelorette-party strippers.”

“You hired strippers?” Darcy perked back up.

“If I’d known that’s all it would take to make you happy, I’d have hired strippers right out of the gate,” Lucy said, shaking her head.

It wasn’t a technique she’d had to use often in the past, given that most of her activities had been unequivocably illegal. The few times she’d run missions in a gray area, though, it hadn’t taken much to make sure the witnesses’ testimony didn’t make it past a grand jury. Her personal record was still five minutes. She briefly considered a repeat of the mechanical squid trick, then thought better of it. The rental agreement had been a pain in the ass before, when she’d been able to give plenty of notice.

The waitress returned with a tray of food, and Darcy sank her teeth into her burger happily. Tony’s phone started buzzing, and Lucy chuckled as she read the text.

“What?” Darcy asked around a mouthful of food.

“I guess Fury sobered up at some point. He wants Stark to explain himself,” she snickered. She hit the reply button and started tapping out an answer.

“What are you telling him?”

“The truth,” Lucy said, smirking. “The absolute, honest truth.”

“That the Department of Energy is after him over permitting issues?” Darcy twisted around and scooted closer to the window when two ambulances that had been repainted with the words “Party Wagon” pulled up and disgorged a dozen men dressed as police, firefighters, and paramedics. “Wow. They offer a first-responder package?”

“That’s why I hired them, yes,” Lucy muttered. She chuckled again. “The truth, as in that he’s in Vegas surrounded by exotic animals of dubious provenance, angry law enforcement officers, and the strippers just got here.”

The ambulances’ PA systems started blaring “Gonna Make You Sweat,” and Darcy giggled.

“That’s a little stereotypical, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Bachelorette parties tend to want very specific things, Lewis. Abs, dick, booze, and overplayed ‘90s club hits. You want a large number of strippers on short notice, you don’t order off-menu, even in Vegas.” She started in on her fries. “Besides, the point of this exercise is to have a bunch of people dressed as cops and firefighters whipping off their pants in public, not to break new ground in the field of exotic dancing.”

“Are those guys filming it really all actors?” Darcy focused her camera on the pair closest to them, and Lucy puffed her straw wrapper at her.

“No recording equipment,” she said. “Contract was very clear on that stipulation.”

“You hired a bunch of actors to record them,” Darcy pointed out.

“I hired a bunch of actors to _pretend_ to record them,” Lucy clarified. “They think they’re extras in an action movie. The actual tourists who sort of glommed on when they noticed the group, I can’t do anything about. But that doesn’t mean you get to be rude when you’re sitting right in front of me.”

“You’re setting up Tony to get reamed out by Director Fury himself, and you’re telling me not to be rude to the strippers.”

“That is an accurate description of events, yes,” Lucy agreed, smiling. 

A prisoner transport van rolled up, and another six men dressed as police piled out. Darcy stole Lucy’s coleslaw and took a picture of a snapping turtle chasing an agent around a fire hydrant. The agent looked like he was seriously considering a promising career in doing anything that wouldn’t involve unexpected reptiles.

“Are those real cops or hot cops?” she asked.

Lucy shrugged. “Probably hot cops. I don’t think real cops show up in transportation that leaves them stranded if they actually arrest anybody.”

When they ripped off their shirts in unison, she grinned and texted Fury another two times.

“What are you telling him now?” Darcy demanded.

“‘Cops are here,’ then ‘No, wait, sorry. It was just more strippers.’”

“You are the worst,” Darcy said around a mouthful of coleslaw.

“Says the girl who orders for me, then steals my food.”

“Eat faster,” Darcy advised.

Lucy bit into her sandwich, then looked at Darcy’s phone for a long moment. She chewed slowly, swallowed, and blotted her mouth with a napkin.

“Lewis, please tell me that you haven’t been instagramming evidence that any and all absolute bullshit that makes its way into these agents’ reports is a completely faithful and accurate depiction of events,” she said. Her estimation of the usefulness of incredible-sounding testimony was declining sharply and picking up speed. The prosecution entering exhibits A through GH from cell phone records and social media sites was not an appealing prospect.

Darcy blinked at her. “Um…”

“That is exactly what you’ve been doing, isn’t it?” she sighed.

“It didn’t really occur to me that that’s what I was doing?” Darcy offered, smiling apologetically.

“Of course it didn’t,” Lucy sighed. “Oh, well. Fuck it. At least the extra Iron Men finally showed up.”

Darcy stood up and leaned over, trying to get a view of the rest of the street. A handful of people in varying degrees of convincing armor were mingling with the crowd, looking confused and occasionally being tackled by an ambitious agent.

“Shouldn’t they have all come together, like the Party Wagon guys?” Darcy asked.

“I wouldn’t have thought so,” Lucy told her, her brows furrowing. She stole what was left of her coleslaw back. “They were all contacted individually, and they’re probably in competition with each other, so there’s probably not even like, a carpool contact list or anything.”

“What, they don’t work for the same agency?”

“Why would they? I mean, I get why you might want to hire like a dozen Iron Man impersonators at once, but these guys are just regular impersonators. They’re not show-dudes or exotic dancers or anything. They just turn up, do some cheesy dialogue, add some faux-celebrity awkwardness to your special event, and then take off in their illegally-parked, modest econobox while yelling ‘Fire repulsors, JARVIS!’ or something.”

Darcy frowned at her. “That’s a really sad description of these guys’ lives.”

“Yet accurate. Probably. I mean, think about who decides to be an Iron Man performer in Vegas as a freelancer. Really, I think we’re doing them a favor.” Lucy finished the coleslaw in two bites. “And I think one of them’s a chick, which is unexpectedly hot in a way that I’ll never admit if you bring it up again.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that part, okay?” Darcy sighed. “Do you even like coleslaw?”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s mine, and you can keep your paws off it.” Lucy glanced at Tony’s phone. “I think I might have actually driven Fury insane with rage. We should probably leave this here when we leave, just in case he actually orders a drone strike on its location.”

“Here being a non-military location with a ton of civilians?” Darcy asked archly.

“We should probably throw this in the nearest storm drain when we leave, just in case he actually orders a drone strike on its location,” Lucy amended.

Darcy tilted her head and watched as the strippers tore off their breakaway pants. “You sure about the no-recording thing?”

“They said no, Lewis.”

“Dammit.” Darcy popped a french fry into her mouth. “So, how much would it cost to just have strippers all the time? Just everywhere I go, strippers. Going to the grocery store? Strippers. Going to the doctor? Strippers. Time to pay taxes? Strippers. Ballpark figures, here.”

“Fuck if I know. I didn’t exactly write it down,” Lucy said, taking another bite of her sandwich.

“You’re being awfully generous about this whole thing,” Darcy said. “What gives?”

Lucy paused, her eyebrows rising. She swallowed and shook her head. “ _Stark_ ’s being awfully generous about this whole thing.”

“Come again?”

“Stark. I’ve got his card. He’s footing the bill for this whole thing, wedding included.”

“Oh.” Darcy nodded, then glanced back at the Iron Man performers. “Wait, does he _know_ he’s paying for all this?”

“Presumably? I mean, he knows I’ve got his card.”

“But he didn’t, you know, give you permission to use it?”

“No, but he also hasn’t cancelled it. Which, given the fact that he has an AI that’s probably smarter than him and wired for sound pre-loaded into his armor, which he’s wearing, is kind of permission.”

Darcy gave her a look.

“It’s _tacit_ permission,” Lucy protested. “It’s the sort of plausible deniability where you’re totally okay with it, but you’d also pass a lie-detector test if the credit card company ever hauled you in and asked you if you’d authorized this use of your card.” She doused her fries in ketchup. “Also, if we tried to use _my_ card for strippers and the local actors’ guild and five dozen live badgers, I’d be getting a snotty call from customer service about atypical usage immediately preceded by them cancelling the fucking thing.”

“Strippers and badgers and actors would be considered atypical usage?” Darcy asked. “You threw an all-Elvis parade one time just because. You sent every anchor who covered Tony’s wardrobe malfunction at the Nobel Prize banquet a fruit basket. You had a swarm of killer bees shipped to Coulson’s house from a research facility that probably should have known better.”

“Okay, Lewis, here’s the thing,” Lucy said. She picked through her fries until she found the crispiest ones. “I genuinely can’t tell where you’re going to fall on the hero/villain continuum. No idea right now. At least, you know, without busting out the divination equipment, which I am so not about to do over _this_. You generally seem like you could go either way, even though you’re hired on with Jane Do-Right. But pretty much no matter what, no matter where you wind up in life, you _cannot_ go around putting shit like that on your credit card. If you need to keep somebody pinned down in their house for a couple of days while the local fish and game service figures out what the fuck to do about a swarm of killer bees, you have to pay cash or an untraceable cash-equivalent. It’s non-negotiable. So _generally_ , my credit card statements are pretty mundane. Yes, I get more than my fair share of ‘for your convenience, we’ve ruined your vacation by stranding you in Cozumel with no money’ phone calls. But on the other hand, nobody’s been able to link my financials to anything prosecutable.”

“Wow.”

“I mean, my vacation wasn’t actually ruined because I am a magician and therefore don’t need money to get, well, _anything_. But that was pretty much the gist of the phone call. Also, while we’re on the subject, you know prepaid cell phones?”

“Yeah, yeah, use a burner if you’re doing anything the NSA doesn’t like,” Darcy sighed.

Lucy pursed her lips and rolled her eyes. “Doesn’t even cover the half of it. You know that whole thing about not leaving money on the table? Well, don’t leave opportunities untaken. If you have the chance to not only avoid getting busted but to present any adversarial agencies with a viable alternative suspect, take it. Don’t just get a prepaid phone that nobody can trace to you. Get a prepaid phone that they can trace to somebody on your shit-list.”

“Is that why you’re bogarting Tony’s phone?”

“No, I’m bogarting Tony’s phone because I’m lazy and don’t feel like walking to someplace that sells burner phones,” Lucy grunted.

“You could just use magic for all of this anyway.”

“Never use superpowers for shit you can just buy, Lewis. Unless you’re broke, or using your powers is incredibly easy. Or the money belongs to someone who’s kind of a jerk. Or a government agency that you’d really prefer take one right on the operating budget. Or--”

“This is turning into an axiom with a lot of qualifiers.”

“Pfft. Any axiom worth committing to memory has at least ten.” Lucy finished her sandwich. “Oh, hey. Now Fury’s oh-so-casually asking why Stark’s in Vegas. Did you tweet wedding photos?”

“...I didn’t _not_ tweet wedding photos.” Darcy stole some of Lucy’s fries. “I made sure they didn’t go out until after the license was filed, though.”

“Well, good thinking there,” Lucy muttered. She chewed her lip, then grinned and started texting furiously.

“How bad is this going to be?” Darcy asked.

“I’m blaming me in a really roundabout way. Fury and Stark are going to be arguing about this for _months_.”

“So, why did you help with this?” Darcy asked, leaning back and giving her a long, measuring look.

“Honestly?”

“That is such a weird question,” Darcy sight. “Yes, of course honestly. I didn’t ask you because I wanted some vaguely convincing bullshit. Jesus. Does anybody ever say ‘Hey, can you tell me something?’ and want a lie?”

Lucy paused with a fry halfway to her mouth. “All the time?”

“That’s not--”

“No, seriously, I think half the time somebody asks me a question, they don’t want a genuine answer.” Lucy chewed thoughtfully. “And that’s not even counting the social-nicety questions like ‘How are you?’, because that’s kind of just making friendly noises at someone when you don’t know them well.”

“Are you trying to distract me?” Darcy asked. “And did you hire strippers who take everything off? Because I think that guy’s just naked.”

“No, I’m just surprised that you said that,” Lucy assured her. “You don’t believe me, try giving a one hundred percent honest answer the next time Hill asks you something like the exact thought process behind…” She scrolled through Tony’s phone and cocked her head. “...hyperintelligent mice in the Avengers tower? Maybe Fury didn’t sober up that much after all.”

“No, that’s kind of a thing. It--”

“I do not want to know.”

“Okay.” Darcy tried to suppress a smile. “It was really cool, though. And that dude is definitely naked.”

“I am going to take your word on...both of those things. The performance contract didn’t include actual nudity, though, so I guess it’s a bonus? Or an accident? Or a streaker? I mean, Vegas is a weird town. But just trust me on the whole honesty thing, they don’t want to hear the actual truth. They want to hear something the lets them sleep at night without having to dispatch a fire-team to make sure you’re not reanimating the dead or teaching killbots to dance.” 

“You’ve done both of those.”

Lucy finished her shake loudly and without acknowledging Darcy’s statement. “The no-bullshit answer to why I helped out with all this is that it’s probably going to make Thor’s family lose their goddamned minds.”

Darcy looked at Lucy, her face unreadable, for a long moment. She didn’t even blink when a clown tripped, bounced off the window, and landed badly on the sidewalk. “Clowns?”

“Fuck if I know. There’s a convention in town, but I didn’t contact anybody about a gig,” Lucy said with a shrug. A bicycle horn sounded twice, and she rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Hell if they’re not getting into it, though. Maybe they’re just super-into naked cops?”

“I thought you _liked_ Thor’s family,” Darcy ventured.

“On a personal level, I’m sure they’re fine. They seem...nice, for the sort of people who won’t stop calling after you tell them to piss off. As nice as that sort of person can be, really, around being a consistent irritant. But I don’t want them in my life, which is a completely different thing from liking them or not liking them. And this whole thing should, if my calculations are correct, translate into them cutting me off, even if they don’t particularly _want_ to, because of the political implications.” Lucy spread her arms. “Game, set, match.” She blinked. “And naked clowns. Game, set, match, and naked clowns. That is...a lot of greasepaint. I’m beyond disapproving of this and right into just being impressed. That guy came _prepared_. I knew a guy who had this whole circus theme going, and none of his people ever applied it past the forearm or collar bone.”

“And I am not looking at naked clowns. I have enough clown-related trauma in my life without _that_. Wait, did you just say ‘if my calculations are correct’?” Darcy asked, frowning.

“Yeah?” 

“How the hell did you _calculate_ this?”

“Um...there’s actually a pretty complex formula that I’ve found helpful in determining whether or not a specific thing is likely to result in someone never speaking to me again,” Lucy explained. “It’s not a failsafe or anything, but it’s a pretty good rule of thumb. One of the AIM scientists I dated came up with it in college after she kept getting asked to move out by roommates. She was kind of socially maladjusted, so she’d run various scenarios to check which one would have the optimal desired outcome before committing to a specific type of interaction. She’s brilliant, so she could run it in her head in like a second, but she wrote it down for me. I can text it to you, if you want.”

“I can’t tell if that’s sweet or disturbing,” Darcy told her.

“I thought it was sweet. And disturbing. But mostly sweet.”

“I meant that you’re offering to share it with me, not that there is one and your ex-girlfriend gave it to you.”

“Oh.” Lucy wiped her hands on a napkin and piled her trash onto her plate, then slid it to the edge of the table. “Well, she’s a big fan of the public domain. Most of her personal research was released without copyright. I don’t think it’s a big stretch to share that around, since information wants to be free and so forth. I don’t think she’d mind.”

Darcy shook her head. “So, you ran the...numbers.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re pretty sure that getting Thor and Jane married is going to get you…?”

“Blackballed from further Asgardian social interactions,” Lucy supplied. “It’s brilliant.”

“You think it’s going to piss them off that bad? Thor really loves his parents. He takes his duties as crown prince very seriously,” Darcy said forlornly.

“Fuck if I know. But--and this should not have escaped you, poli-sci major that you are--there’s being unhappy with an outcome, and then there’s being politically required to be down on the way it happened.” Lucy carefully focused Tony’s phone, snapped a picture, and sent it to Fury. “Like, they might love Jane and be totally cool with a weird marriage alliance with Earth, but it happening without their official approval is a problem. Since I’m responsible for that problem and have approximately zero interest in ever participating in that political system, I’m the most reasonable target for any reprisals. Reprisals they probably don’t really want to pursue, and are out of their element if they have to come here to carry them out, anyway. _Non causa si pro causa_.”

“You realize that last bit was just nonsense, right?” Darcy asked. “And what did you just send Fury? Clown-butt? He is not going to appreciate clown-butt.”

“Um, yeah. Side effect of the language spell I went for a while ago. If a point kind of gets away from me and I start word-salading, it turns it into bullshit Latin. Which is weird, but fairly benign in terms of unintentional and unexpected spell fallout.” Lucy made a face and signalled the waitress. “Compared to the times I’ve tried to use corporate-buzzword-speak to put a happy face on telling somebody to fuck off and it’s come out as ‘fuck off,’ I don’t think it’s that much of an issue. I’m getting dessert, you want anything?”

Darcy coughed pointedly and glowered at the phone.

“I sent him a picture of a half-dressed clown hosing down a stork with a seltzer bottle and informed him that I no longer have any idea what’s going on,” Lucy said. “Which is accurate. I think this might be officially out of hand.”

“You _think_?”

“Nobody’s rioting. I get to have my reservations until a riot breaks out. Now, do you want anything for dessert? Or just coffee. They also serve coffee.”

“I’ve had two shakes, a huge burger, and half your fries,” Darcy pointed out.

Lucy stared at her. “Is that a yes, or a no?”

“Seriously?” Darcy groaned, burying her head in her arms.

“Don’t say it like that, Lewis. I have no idea where you even put that much. You’re tiny. I mean, I’m a constantly-running inferno of occult power--”

“That you routinely use to light cigarettes,” she mumbled into her wrist.

“And I’ve got like a foot on you.” Lucy smiled beatifically. “I assume that’s a no, then?”

“That’s a no.”

“Fine, suit yourself.” Lucy glanced up at the waitress, who cleared their plates and looked at her expectantly.

“You’d like the check?”

“I’d like the check, and also that thing where it’s a pile of cookies smothered in ice cream and hot fudge.”

The waitress blinked at her for a split second before recovering. “Sure thing. Coming right up.”

“Would the inferno of occult energy like a stick of gum?” Darcy asked.

“The inferno of occult energy would like you to not be a jerk about things,” Lucy snorted.

“You used Thor and Jane’s wedding to get your Asgardian parents off your back.”

“For everybody’s good. Everybody’s a winner, Lewis. There is no downside to this.” A pair of eggs smashed against the window, and Lucy paused. “Is that half the cast of _Nerdbusters_? I thought they were based out of Raleigh.”

“Tony miiiiiiiiight have called them posers and publicly critiqued their physics,” Darcy explained. “I thought they were out of Raleigh, too, though. You know, that crowd’s getting awfully ugly.”

“That crowd started out ugly, and now it has semi-naked clowns. What part of enraged peacocks trying to fight monkeys riding on tapirs eluded you?” Lucy demanded.

“Excuse me, could we get the cookie sundae to go?” Darcy asked, flagging down a waitress.

“That’s not our waitress.”

“I know, but she can _tell_ our waitress. And you riled up a bunch of peacocks, so you can shush.”

“I didn’t! Peacocks are just like that. They’re basically geese who know they’re pretty.”

Darcy stared at her. “Have you ever met a peacock before?”

“Yes, and it tried to pick a fight with my car. I am so not fucking kidding about them being geese who know they’re pretty. They are _mean_ birds,” Lucy said petulantly. “Have I ever met a peacock before. What kind of fucking question is that?”

“We are getting a cab to the airport, and we are going to have a really long talk about this whole pissing off Asgard thing while we’re waiting for security to x-ray our shoes,” Darcy said darkly.

“Fine,” Lucy snapped, getting to her feet. She pulled out a wallet and started fishing bills from the fold.

“Why does it say ‘Born to file’?” Darcy asked.

“Presumably because Fury and Coulson share the same weird sense of humor about Coulson’s inability to leave things uncategorized.” She folded a trio of hundreds in half and tucked them under a glass. “But you’d really have to ask Coulson if you want to know for sure.”

“Did Phil also give you tacit permission to use his money?”

“Nope.” Lucy grinned. “You can give the wallet back to him if you want, though. I have to assume there’s some sentimental value to it.” She chewed her lip and took in the growing chaos on the street outside. “We should go out the back.”


	85. Chapter 85

Fury paged through his calendar, took a sip of his scotch, and marked out an appointment with his pen. On the other side of his desk, Tony slouched in one chair, and Darcy fidgeted in another. When he finally looked up, Darcy gave him her best salesman’s smile, and Tony elbowed her.

“I want you both to know that I’m not mad,” Fury sighed, “so much as I am disappointed.”

“When are you ever not mad?” Tony asked sceptically. Darcy kicked his ankle without even looking. “Hey!”

“About which part?” she asked.

“I think what she means is--” Tony began.

“Do you two have any idea how many favors I had to call in to get those charges dropped?” Fury asked, sitting back in his chair. His tone was deceptive calm, and he finished his drink slowly.

Darcy cocked her head. “Is that a trick question?”

“Yeah, actually,” Tony chimed in, frowning. “They had to drop the charges against me, because nobody was sure what was me and what was the impersonators, and Darcy was willing to testify that a known supervillain was responsible for everything with a paper trail. My lawyers did all that.”

“And there wasn’t anything they could charge me with, because I didn’t do anything illegal,” Darcy added. “You didn’t get them to drop charges against Lucy, did you? Because that seems like a _huge_ waste of a favor. She’d go hold up a liquor store right afterwards just out of spite.”

“All right, all right,” Fury snapped, holding up his hands. “Fine. SHIELD did not have to intervene to get you out of Vegas. Are you happy now?”

“You were just trying to manipulate us,” Darcy said, crossing her arms. “That’s a pretty big party foul, Director Fury. And I say that as someone who never got her iPod back after the SHIELD goon-squad rolled through.”

“The agency does not employ goon-squads, Miss Lewis,” he told her firmly.

“What about jack-booted thugs?” Tony asked, rubbing his eyes.

“Are you hungover, Stark? Where did you even find the time to get drunk between being arrested and making bail?”

“The arresting officers were unwilling to let the opportunity of having a baseball team’s worth of Tony Starks go to waste,” he explained, wincing slightly. “We ordered in and broke open the case of cheap champagne the stripper-cops brought with them. It was actually pretty fun, except for the part where Pepper’s never going to let me live any of it down.”

“If your girlfriend cared about something like that, she probably wouldn’t still be your girlfriend,” Darcy pointed out.

“Pepper-the-girlfriend is over it. Pepper-the-CEO would _really_ prefer I not let a supervillain use my corporate card to order strippers.” He slumped down even further into his chair. “Apparently the ‘board of directors’,” he made little air-quotes with his fingers, “find it ‘very interesting,’ and she feels like it undermines her credibility.”

Darcy’s brows furrowed. “When did she find time to tell you this?”

“After the last time this happened.” Tony squinted at the window. “Is there any way we can get some shades drawn or hit the dimmer switch on the sun or something?”

“No,” Fury said.

“Oh well.” He grimaced. “At least it was worth it, right? Objective achieved?”

“This would be the objective where you got the heir to the throne of an advanced alien civilization married to an American national without the approval of any authorities from either government, with the help of a public figure,” Fury’s gaze rested on Tony, “and a known criminal mastermind?”

“Um. Yes,” Darcy said, tugging at the hem of her shirt. “That would be the objective. But they’re totally in love!”

“Does anyone really consider Jones a mastermind?” Tony protested.

Fury glared at him.

“No, I’m serious. I’m more used to ‘mastermind’ describing people like, I don’t know, Moriarty. Jones does things like call a bunch of impersonators and half a second-rate circus to weasel out of civil disturbance charges,” Tony said. “I don’t think she ever plans more than a few steps ahead. I’ve met supervillains with more complicated plans to get out of parking tickets.”

“Stop deflecting, Stark,” Fury sighed.

“How am I deflecting?” he asked. He glanced toward the window and winced again. “Not even some curtains?”

“You’re ignoring the thing he’s mad about and quibbling over inessential terminology,” Darcy said. Tony glared at her, and Fury snorted.

“Whose side are you on, again?” he grunted. 

Darcy glowered back at him. “How was I supposed to know you were stalling instead of asking an honest question?”

“When has anyone ever asked that as an honest question?” Tony demanded. “In the history of human civilization, when has someone ever asked something like _that_ and not been trying to get out of something?”

“Um, all the time? Or have you never worked with a group of sleep-deprived and over-caffeinated scientists who don’t know how to manage their own frustration with ambiguous results and software malfunctions? Because the last time I checked your bio--”

“I really prefer to work alone, Lewis. In the lab, I mean.” Tony paused. “And a lot of times in the field, too, now that I think about it. It took a really long time for me to adapt to having a team.”

“As satisfying as long discussions about Stark’s personal failings tend to be, I feel that we’re drifting from the point,” Fury told them.

Tony rubbed his temples. “Look, Nick. Can I call you Nick yet?”

“We’re back to Director after this nonsense,” Fury said. “You might get upgraded back to getting to call me Fury if you can provide some cover for this definitely not having been our play.”

“Even though it’s exactly what you wanted to happen?” Darcy asked innocently.

“ _Especially_ when it’s exactly what we wanted to happen,” Fury snorted. “And I’ll deny that if you ever bring it up again.”

“Wait, we’re getting yelled at for doing something you’re totally okay with?” Tony demanded. “How is that fair?”

“Life isn’t fair, Stark,” Fury reminded him. “This being a good thing for us means we’re now under pressure to demonstrate that we didn’t engineer it.”

“This strikes me as the sort of problem you wouldn’t have if you were less, you know, underhanded and awful about everything,” Darcy said, popping a piece of gum in her mouth. She extended the package to Fury. “Hubba Bubba?”

“Pass,” he grunted.

“What flavor?” Tony asked.

“Hawaiian punch, but you don’t get any because you were mean to me.”

“Oh, come on. You’ve had three pieces already. And you were willing to share with the guy who’s being mean to both of us for no apparent reason,” he protested.

“It’s my gum, I can do what I like with it.” Darcy blew a bubble at him. “And this is my first piece, anyway. I gave Lucy the other two.”

“I don’t get any because I was mean, but you gave two pieces to the supervillain who bribed a cab driver to take you to the airport before jumping from the moving vehicle and running away?” Tony puffed out his cheeks. “Why does everybody wind up liking criminals with superpowers more than they like me?”

“Have you read your psych profile?” Fury asked dryly.

“I think you should probably talk to your therapist about why you feel that way,” Darcy sighed. “And obviously I gave her the gum _before_ she did that. I mean, you’re a genius, as you keep reminding everybody. I’d think the basic timeline there would have been kind of clear.”

“She’s a magician, and you have a weird soft spot for her,” Tony said defensively. “And I _have_ read my psych profile. It did not have an adequate explanation for why people favor powered criminals more than me.”

“It’s because you’re willfully obtuse,” Fury told him. “Now, are you two going to get your stories straight about this being a hostage situation in which SHIELD had absolutely no involvement, or do I have to be disappointed _and_ angry?”

“Do we have to say it was a hostage situation?” Darcy asked. “I mean, there were enough felonies committed along the line that I feel bad about adding to it with stuff that didn’t really happen. At least the five of us were there of our own free will, and I think pretty much everyone else was being paid for their time.”

“Paid handsomely,” Tony corrected. “You should see the bill.”

“And she probably can’t _make_ Thor do anything he doesn’t want to do, right? Otherwise he never would have seen her again after she got him out of that coma? Not that he can really get her to do anything she doesn’t want to, either, if the look on his face during that bajillion-hour car chase was anything to go off of,” Darcy mused. “We should check on that, the next time we see her. Just to be clear.”

“Flip a coin, it’ll be more accurate,” Fury grunted. “And yes, you really have to say it was a hostage situation.”

“How would pulling an answer out of our asses be more accurate than getting it straight from the two of them?” Darcy asked, smacking her gum.

“Please?” Tony wheedled, reaching for a piece.

“No.” She waved the packet at Fury again, just to annoy Tony. He rolled his eyes, then closed them and rubbed his temples gingerly.

“I’ve personally heard that woman lie in her sleep,” Fury informed them, finally accepting Darcy’s offer.

“Seriously?” Tony sighed.

“Yeah, I was a little impressed, too,” Fury chuckled. “I figured it was just Coulson who did that.”

“No, I meant about the gum. It’s ridiculously petty at this point.” Tony perked up. “Wait, Coulson sleep-lies? Even your totally up-front we’re-from-SHIELD guys have lying about everything programmed as a subconscious reflex? I feel so much better about--” Fury’s eyebrow arched, and he steepled his fingers. “--all those things I categorically had nothing to do with at all.”

“Nice save, Stark,” Darcy muttered.

“I’ve had negative three hours of sleep in the past two days, and I’m still a little drunk on bad stripper-champagne, and I don’t need you critiquing my ability to defy The Man,” he said.

“Defy? That barely rated a ‘sass.’ And I don’t think you’re allowed to call anyone else The Man when you’re considering buying whoever makes Hubba Bubba out just so I can’t have any more since I won’t share with you,” she said.

“I wasn’t considering that.”

“You are now.”

“Well, now that you said it, yes, I am. I wasn’t before.”

“Children, please. Focus.” Fury leaned forward and frowned at them. “I know you were both recently the victims of a very traumatic and humiliating kidnapping plot, but still.”

“I’m not saying Lucy kidnapped us.” Darcy sat back and crossed her arms. “That’s not how it happened, and I’m not saying it.”

“I’ll have your student loans forgiven,” Fury promised.

Darcy chewed her lip. “She’d totally understand if I said she kidnapped all of us.”

“She can turn you into an octopus,” Tony warned. “You know how long they live? Two years if they’re lucky. And that’s assuming she wouldn’t do it someplace like the middle of New Mexico where they don’t believe in water or fish.”

“I’ll get Secretary Moniz to forget about you deciding you didn’t need permits to install an untested reactor that could power the greater New England area in a densely-populated city.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed.

“She’s _magic_ , Fury. I need a guarantee that the Department of Energy in general is going to have a permanent me-shaped blind spot. And Benedict Lewis here needs all of her student loans forgiven forever.”

“She already agreed to--”

“Nuh-uh,” Darcy interrupted. “If I’m going to grad school as an octopus, my post-graduation career options are going to be limited to low-paying gigs. Not to mention that I think Jones will actually be less mad if I got a really good deal when I sold her out. So what he said.”

Fury shook his head. “Just for the record, Dr. Thomas is still alive and by all accounts very happy with her current form.”

“Who’s Dr. Thomas?” she asked, blowing a bubble.

Fury’s lipped pursed. “The woman Jones turned into an octopus.” 

“Oh.” The bubble popped, and Darcy carefully peeled gum off her chin. 

*****

“Get up. We must have words, you and I.”

Lucy opened her eyes and got a very close look at deep-pile carpet and a pair of leather boots. She groaned, half rolled over, and squinted blearily up at Sif. “Buh?”

Sif put her hands on her hips and glowered down at her. “Where are your clothes? We are leaving.”

“Huh?” Lucy patted her hands down her body. She didn’t remember swapping her suit for a cocktail dress, but apparently she had at some point. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and wondered if she could go back to sleep. She’d been dreaming about a condor so big it filled the sky, and when it beat its wings, the whole world had shivered with energy.

“Are you so drunk that you’ve forgotten how to speak?”

“Nuh?” Lucy rolled back over. She was running on fumes, and she felt like she’d been hit by a truck. Fuck it. There was no going back to sleep now. “These are clothes. Pretty sure they’re mine, and possession is nine tenths of the law even if they aren’t. And nobody asked you.” She flung her arm over her eyes. “So go away.”

“I would prefer not to have this conversation in front of a gathering of your,” Sif glared around the room with a barely-suppressed look of contempt, “hangers-on.”

Lucy groped for the sofa she’d seen the edge of when she’d first opened her eyes and hauled herself into a sitting position. She concentrated for a moment, trying to put her movements in the past week in proper order. Vegas. She was probably still in Vegas. Jane and Thor were married. The EPA?...no, the Department of Energy had been after Stark. She’d been firmly asked to leave a casino after setting a pair of llamas up on the slot machines. Apparently they’f kept spitting on the servers. She licked her lips and swallowed. Her mouth felt like she’d drank an entire bottle of simple syrup before falling asleep. She made a face and cleared her throat.

“They’re not my hangers-on. I think they’re some rich guy in the back bedroom’s hangers-on. Probably the dude in the silk robe with all the professional hand-models passed out on him. Fucking hell, I think I slept on a bunch of ball-bearings. Everything hurts.”

“If you don’t know whose quarters these are, what are you doing here?” Sif hissed, lowering her voice.

“Do they have party-crashers where you’re from? Because if they do, then I’m crashing the party.” Lucy rested her forehead on her knees. “Or I _was_ crashing the party, when there was still a party to crash instead of a bunch of sleeping people and one chick who’s done way too much coke in the bathroom reading the user’s manual for a curling iron for the tenth time since the sun came up.”

She finally managed to lift her head without feeling like the entire room was slowly spinning around her and squinted at Sif again. Sif looked...well, not the angriest she’d ever seen her, but close. Which, she reflected, was saying something, given the time she’d accidentally pulled off Sif’s hair. Of all the people she hadn’t figured on being furious with her over Thor’s wedding, Sif--who seemed genuinely fond of Jane and reasonably sold on Thor’s career as an Avenger--would have topped the list. Lucy rubbed her eyes and yawned.

“What’s got your armor in a twist?” she asked conversationally.

“Not here,” Sif gritted.

“Fine.” Lucy pushed herself carefully to her feet and wobbled into the kitchen. She pulled the fridge open and blinked in the light from the interior. “You want anything? Water, soda, offensively cheap wine cooler, what I’ll say for the sake of plausible deniability is a very realistic fake severed hand?”

If there was anything that more precisely encapsulated her love-hate relationship with Vegas, Lucy thought, she did not want to find it.

Sif looked around her, glanced back at the bedroom, and then pinched the bridge of her nose. “The region’s authorities should be alerted, should they not?”

“Probably,” Lucy agreed. She reached in for the water and drank straight from the pitcher. Sif raised her eyebrows at the bright red lipstick stain left on the rim, and Lucy snorted. “Dude’s got raw human body parts in his fridge, he can suck on it if he wants to get pissy about me drinking straight from the jug.”

“Do you think you should be helping yourself to the contents of an ogre’s larder?” Sif asked with hard-won patience, her eyes glittering.

“It’s water, not a weekend pot roast with all the trimmings,” Lucy grunted. She swayed and clutched at her throat, her eyes widening. Sif swore and darted around the kitchen island, grabbing her arms and propping her up until Lucy dropped her hand and laughed. “Gotcha.”

Sif’s lips flattened into a thin, hard line, and she pointed to the door. “Out!”

“Well, _I_ thought it was funny,” Lucy grumbled.

“It was childish and unworthy.”

“Isn’t that what I just said?” Lucy paused next to the phone, dialed the front desk, and said, “There’s a human hand in the fridge in my suite. Could you please send security and-or housekeeping? Great, thanks.”

She hung up without waiting for an answer and shrugged at Sif’s incredulous glare.

“That is not what I meant by the authorities.”

“Meh.” Lucy shrugged. “We’re in Vegas. It’s close enough.” She stepped over a softly snoring man. “We are still in Vegas, aren’t we?”

“Do you not know?” Sif asked, carefully picked her way around a couple who’d passed out in each other’s arms.

“The last twelve hours are more than a little fuzzy. Which actually makes it really impressive that you managed to find me.” Lucy paused to slide a joint out of a sleeping woman’s pocket and then sauntered out the door. “Or have I left a trail of destruction and lamentation in my wake?”

“I asked Heimdall,” Sif admitted. “Though I don’t doubt I could simply have followed your path by asking the most outraged-looking of the attendant mortals which direction you’d headed.”

“And the guy what, dropped you right in the lobby?” Lucy asked.

“We’re not an invading horde,” she sputtered. “I arrived in the parking lot. Because I was raised in court, and not in some brigand’s barn.”

Lucy lit the joint and took a long drag. The knot at the base of her skull loosened a little, and then the smoke detector went off. She glared at the speakers and waved her hand sharply. They fell silent, and Sif eyed her dress.

“So long as you’re slopping magic all over the place, why don’t you conjure up something that might conceivably turn a blade?”

“I’m sorry, are my fantastic legs distracting you?”

“Your misdeeds are distracting me. Your legs are merely embarrassingly vulnerable.” Sif followed her into the elevator and waited with ill grace while they descended from the penthouse. “What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking I looked pretty banging in this dress, and that I don’t need armor, and that you can kiss my ass,” Lucy grunted. “Here. It might make you less annoying.”

Sif wrinkled her nose at the proffered cigarette and crossed her arms.

“How could you do it?” she demanded finally, her anger cracking into something that Lucy suspected was disappointment.

Lucy closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the cool metal of the wall. She hadn’t really paid much attention to the parties she’d slipped through after she’d ditched Lewis. They’d been bright and loud and alive, and the women had been pretty and up for a little flirting, and nobody had minded when she’d helped herself to the liquor or the pot. She’d completely forgotten about the galling weight of Thor’s affection and Jane’s gratitude as well as the likely repercussions of the stunt she’d pulled. She’d been able to breathe freely for the first time since she’d had this stupid idea. She couldn’t square that with the sullen mix of emotions on Sif’s face. It wasn’t as if Lucy knew her well, but she suspected that if Sif were simply angry over the wedding, it wouldn’t have an undercurrent like this. She heaved a small sigh. She’d signed on for exactly this sort of bullshit when she’d made the wedding happen, but it annoyed her to recognize a tiny splinter of hurt at Sif’s reaction worming its way through her resignation. 

“You are going,” Lucy said, “to have to be a little more specific.”

“How could you kidnap Thor’s companions and ensorcel him?” Sif growled, turning on her.

“How could I...?” Lucy blinked at her, unsure that she’d heard her right. The question was surreal. She wasn’t entirely sure her magic would be normally effective against Thor--not with Mjolnir crouching there, waiting to lend him power--never mind next-level shit like mind-control. And kidnapping everyone else? Where the hell had Sif even--?

A second later her sluggish brain caught up with her mouth, and she plastered a smug grin on her face. This was so much _better_.

“How could I _not_?” she asked coldly. She put the joint to her lips and started to take a drag before thinking better of it. Getting high was not in her best interests right now, she was pretty sure. For one thing, Sif had swung back from looking disappointed to looking infuriated, and she strongly suspected she was another few choice jibes away from getting hurled bodily out a window. Lucy smirked. “You know what the best part is? I had Thor so completely wrapped around my finger that he’s going to go home to Asgard and tell everybody that this was all _his_ idea.”

*****

Darcy sipped her coffee and poked at her phone listlessly. As much as Jane complained about the physics in the black hole level of Angry Birds, Darcy thought the bigger problem was that it just wasn’t as much fun to watch them go sailing into an event horizon as it was to watch them go sailing into an enemy or fortification. Another text notification from Jane popped up, and she guiltily dismissed it. Fury had been adamant about the radio-silence portion of the deal. She was pretty sure the safehouse in the middle of nowhere had been picked to emphasize the idea of not picking up for or calling anyone rather than safety.

“Lewis!”

Darcy almost jumped out of her skin at the sharply hissed whisper, then turned around wildly, looking for the source. Lucy climbed over the railing onto the deck and dropped into a crouch, looking around wildly. When she didn’t spot any guards, she straightened and cracked her knuckles.

“Oh god,” Darcy yelped. “You’re here to turn me into an octopus. Tony warned me, and I didn’t listen, and just oh, god.”

Lucy stared at her. “Do you _want_ to be turned into an octopus?”

“No!”

“Then why would I turn you into an octopus?”

“Because I might have done something to upset you?” Darcy hedged, trying to put a patio table in between her and the magician. “Why do you look like somebody punched you through a wall?”

Lucy watched her maneuvering, then rolled her eyes and snapped her fingers. The table vanished. “Because I might have slightly overestimated Sif’s patience with supposed treachery, and consequently she might have slightly punched me through a wall. Upon further research, it looks like I might have you to thank, also slightly, for that.”

“Oh, shit,” Darcy muttered. “How mad are you?”

“That depends. How much did you get out of Fury in exchange for telling everyone I’m the baddest man in the whole damn town?” Lucy asked. She loosened her braid and carded some plaster dust and a few pebbles out of her hair.

“Free tuition, forever.” Darcy sank back into a chair and held her cup in both hands. She didn’t think Lucy would actually turn her into anything unpleasant, but she hadn’t thought it through to the inevitable Asgardian reprisals, either. She’d figured Thor would smooth things over before anything really hit the fan.

Lucy chewed her lip. “Not bad, I guess. You’re totally applying to the most expensive fucking universities on the planet now, right? I mean, you do understand that Fury’s going to try to guilt you into keeping it reasonable, and that I will be absolutely fucking _insane with rage_ if I find out I got sold out over less than two hundred grand, yeah?”

“This is...not how I expected this conversation to go,” Darcy confessed. “Sif really punched you through a wall?”

“More like threw me through a couple of walls, if we’re being overly specific. She was super-pissed about the whole thing.” Lucy shrugged and rebraided her hair.

“I am so sorry,” Darcy said, cringing. “I was thinking of how this would play out in political backchannels, not interdimensional ones.”

“I may have exacerbated things by being my usual Sif-charming self. And by saying that I’d seen better sword-work out of drunken Xena stunt-doubles. And also by turning her boots into rollerskates.” Lucy smiled brightly. “Here’s the thing, though: If we’re going to keep our stories straight, I need the inside scoop on what it is I’m supposed to have done.”

Darcy opened her mouth and closed it a few times, unable to shake the mental image of Sif in rollerskates. Lucy perched on the railing and swung her feet impatiently as she waited for Darcy to process the information.

“Why would you want to keep our stories straight?” she finally asked. “We’re pinning it on you.”

“And I’m playing along with it,” she explained slowly, green eyes wide with encouragement. “It’s going to be great. But to do that, I need to know exactly what you guys told everyone.”

Darcy put her mug down and rubbed the back of her neck. This was a disaster. “Why would you ever want to play along with this? You just said Sif threw you through a series of walls, she was so angry.”

“I have my reasons, I can withstand being thrown through a few walls every now and again--though I really do prefer it if people don’t aim for load-bearing columns--and why are you looking a gift horse in the mouth?” Lucy countered.

“Because I remember what happened to Troy, and you smell like you’ve been on a three-day bender,” Darcy sighed. “And you swore an eternal grudge against Hogun for beating you at checkers one time.”

“That is an exaggeration.”

“You told him he’d rue the day.”

“Okay, all right, fine, I might have a bit of a temper,” Lucy grunted. She crossed her arms and looked around. “How many miles away is your nearest neighbor, anyway?”

“There is no way I’m telling you that, please don’t murder me,” Darcy said quickly.

“I’m not going to murder you,” Lucy huffed, planting her hands firmly on the railing and leaning forward. Darcy expected her lips to curl up like the Cheshire Cat’s when she smiled. “I smell like I’ve been on a three-day bender because I have been on a three-day bender. This isn’t a trap, though. This is...synergy. This is everybody getting what they want.”

“Okay. Just tell me, why would you want this?” Darcy asked firmly.

Lucy snorted and hopped down, then began to pace the length of the deck. “Why do you care? I don’t care why it’s suddenly so important to Fury that this all be some nefariously villainous plot instead of mildly irresponsible elopement.”

“So this doesn’t look like a unilateral power-grab to people with nuclear arsenals or other alien contacts,” Darcy pointed out.

“Yes, and I suppose that makes sense, but the point I was making is that I don’t _care_.” Lucy spun on her heel and flopped into the other chair. “I’m buying into the myth, Lewis. I’m backing you up. I’m going to go put on some normal clothes and stomp around a mall and animate a herd of Furbies and demand my likeness be blasted into the side of the Lincoln Memorial if anyone ever wants those little robot monsters to stop haunting their dreams, and at some point in time during all that I’m going to monologue about how I also did whatever you guys said I did and no one can stop me. I just need to know what you’re alleging so that I can confirm it.”

“You’re really phoning it in there, aren’t you?” Darcy arched an eyebrow and cocked her head.

“If Kang the Conqueror can sneeze on a bunch of chickens and not get accused of phoning it in--”

“Kang the Conqueror doesn’t get accused of phoning it in because Kang the Conqueror is very petty and has a time machine, I’m pretty sure.”

“I had a time machine, and I’m apparently extremely petty,” Lucy pointed out.

“You had a time machine, past tense, and then you set it on fire.” Darcy groaned. She got to her feet. “I’m going to need more caffeine for this. I can’t believe I almost felt sorry for you for a minute!”

“Well, now that we’ve turned the final page on that dark chapter of our lives, spill it,” she demanded. “I really don’t want to try my luck bluffing my way back into SHIELD.”

“Wait.” Darcy stopped and turned. “ _Back_?”

“I maaaaaaaaaaay have gotten your location by briefly pretending to be Hill.” Lucy coughed and spread her hands. “Again.”

“So I don’t have to worry about any magical revenge for narcing on you, because Hill is going to use her secret orbital deathray on you,” Darcy finished.

“So you can see why I don’t want to risk a second venture,” Lucy said, glaring at her. “If Hill didn’t want people pretending to be her all the time, she should try to be less powerful and terrifying. I mean, honestly, there are easier ways to get what you want, but not many.” 

“Your funeral,” Darcy sighed, turning back to the door.

“Two sugars and a lot of cream in mine, will you?”

“I’m not making you coffee.” Darcy stalked into the house.

“I feel like you owe me at least a cup of coffee if you’re going to get me hurled bodily through very soundly constructed buildings, Lewis.” The only answer was the screen door slamming until Darcy stomped back out with two mugs in her hands.

“Why didn’t you just get the brief while you were pretending to be Hill?” she snapped, shoving one into Lucy’s hands.

“Three-day bender, multiple walls, etcetera. It could have been better-planned,” Lucy admitted. She took a sip of coffee. “Siddhartha Gautama, how much sugar did you put in this?”

“Why do you want to help?” Darcy insisted, leaning back on the railing. She frowned at the plaster-dust scuff marks Lucy had left on the finish and brushed them away.

“Like I said, mutually-beneficial arrangement. Fury gets his secret-decoder-ring cover-story, and I get a little, tiny, eensy smidgen of my credibility back.” Lucy drained half the cup and wrinkled her nose. “Do you have any idea what it’s like trying to get anyone in a position to pay me to take me seriously with him galloping around shouting ‘Sister!’ at the top of his lungs? I can’t even get arrested anymore.”

“Pretty sure you could if you tried real hard and believed in yourself,” Darcy muttered. “You know Thor’s going to tell everyone the truth, right?”

“Thor’s going to tell all of his _friends_ the truth,” Lucy corrected, smirking. “And a personally-conducted, in-depth survey of every heavy-hitter in the English-speaking world tells me that he doesn’t have many friends who are going to repeat the story of what really happened in Las Vegas to anyone I care about hearing it.”

“In the meantime, the Asgardians aren’t exactly great enemies to have.”

“I’m sure they can go fuck themselves just as hard as everybody else,” Lucy said, grimacing as she finished the coffee. “There’s half a cane field left in this mug, just in case, you know, you want to bake a cake or something. Waste not, want not.”

“You are the least grateful supervillain I have ever met,” Darcy sighed, exasperated. “I cannot believe how okay you are with Thor’s family wanting to kill you.”

“They don’t want to _kill_ me, they just want to beat me up. Sif didn’t even try to sword me once.” Lucy got to her feet and stretched. “I think they wanted to kill me more when they first met me, to tell the truth. Now they’re just pissed off because how could I do such a thing and they totally trusted me and blah blah blah. Back then they were all ‘you’re a fratricidal usurper maniac who tried to blow up a planet, grrr!’ about everything. And I still don’t give a shit. You should try it some time, it’s actually pretty great.”

“And yet you care about what Madame Masque thinks.”

“Only insofar as that translates into Madame Masque giving me lots of money and a baller reference.” Lucy’s brows knit together. “Wait, which one’s Madame Masque again? I may not actually care what she thinks. She may have found Jesus or something.”

“If I give you a run-down of the official story, do you promise to leave me alone until after lunch?” Darcy asked, giving in.

“I promise to think about it really hard. Let’s go inside. I feel like I’m going to need a whiteboard for this. And access to pancakes. And bacon. And whatever else SHIELD thoughtfully stocks its safehouse pantries with.” Lucy shifted restlessly when Darcy made no move to follow, then spread her arms. “Okay, fine, I promise to leave you alone until after lunch if you catch me up on you and Stark and Fury’s completely stellar narrative that I’m sure has no holes in it whatsoever that I’ll need to fill if we’re going to pull this off.”

“Nobody’s vetting this! We’re fine!”

“They will once Thor starts running his big alien mouth about it all being lies,” Lucy sighed. “That’s how this sort of thing falls apart. Believe me, I have had a lot of ass-covering stories come apart at the seams over less. Now let’s workshop this monstrosity.”

Darcy trudged after her reluctantly. “You don’t even know what that means. Workshopping is horrible. You don’t want to workshop anything.”

“Of course I know what it means,” Lucy said, holding the door for her. “You know how many committees and brainstorming sessions and working groups get looped into things when the penalty for failure is death? Nobody ever wants to be the guy solely responsible for anything when that guy gets shot if it backfires. Not like AIM is above liquidating an entire department because they can’t trace the fuck-up back to just one person, but I’m sure you understand the psychology behind it.”

“Okay, _I_ don’t want to workshop anything. Workshopping makes me break out in hives,” Darcy snapped.

“Buck up, Lewis,” Lucy chirped. “We’re in the middle of fucking Montana. It’s not like you’ve got anything better to do, unless you had big plans to get eaten by wolves or surprised by an angry badger. But first, breakfast.”


	86. Chapter 86

Darcy sighed and capped the green marker in her hand. 

“Is this why you don’t mind workshopping?” she asked, adjusting her glasses. “Because I wouldn’t mind workshopping either, if it meant ‘eat all the pancakes and play Candy Crush while somebody else does all the work.’ I suddenly feel way sorrier for a bunch of AIM dorks than I ever thought I’d feel. You’re a work-group freeloader.”

“I left you a pancake,” Lucy protested automatically. She waved her hand vaguely at the dirty dishes covering the coffee table without looking up from Darcy’s phone.

“No, you didn’t.”

“Sure I did.”

“Then where is it?”

Lucy finally looked up, green eyes scanning the table. She pointed at a plate. “Right there. See?”

“That is a short-stack that looks like a rat’s been at it,” Darcy said, crossing her arms. “Did you even use a fork, or did you just roll it up like a burrito and bite pieces off of it?”

“It’s a third of three pancakes. Ergo--and feel free to check my math on this-- it’s one pancake.” She smiled triumphantly.

Darcy threw the marker at her and stalked toward the kitchenette. “You’re such a child sometimes.”

“Says the woman who just threw her art supplies at me,” Lucy called after her. She looked at the whiteboard and dug her fingers into her hair. Darcy had lost her right around the time she’d decided she couldn’t finish the pancakes. “There’s no way to issue an update on this correcting the mind-control claim, is there? Like, we can’t spin this as a gas-leak or a mistranslation or something?”

“I can’t hear you over the sound of me having to make another box of mix just to have breakfast,” Darcy grumbled. “Besides, didn’t you cop to that with Sif? Did I misunderstand what you were trying to tell me about how that whole thing went down? I mean, you didn’t stop eating the entire time, so it’s more than possible.”

“I was hungry.” Lucy shrugged and tossed Darcy’s phone onto the table. “I rolled with it when Sif yelled at me about it. That doesn’t mean I want the official line kicking around _here_ to involve it. Like, Asgard can think I turned into a fucking jabberwocky and vorpalled everybody into participating, for all I care.”

Darcy frowned as she mixed the batter together and poked at the burners.

“You really don’t remember how that poem went at all, do you?” she finally asked.

“Not even a little,” Lucy confirmed.

“Does it really matter that much? Shit shit _shit_!” Darcy yelped. “Can you...unmelt spatulas?” 

Lucy snapped her fingers and contemplated the whiteboard for another moment. She hadn’t expected so many question marks from a cover story put together by Fury himself.

“This thing is a fucking trainwreck, and that is why you should stick to metal,” she said conversationally.

“Metal also melts,” Darcy retorted, turning on a different burner. She examined the reconstituted spatula and shook her head. “And it scrapes up teflon pans.”

“Not usually at home-range temperatures, though. I mean, you have to work at it to melt a metal spatula in a normal kitchen. You know what I really admire about this whole thing? The way there’s not even a posited reason I did it.” Lucy got to her feet and fished the marker out of the couch cushions. “I just swooped in and took everyone to Vegas to fuck with you all. I have literally heard better excuses out of drunken ex-girlfriends I’ve caught face-deep in a stranger’s vagina.”

Darcy’s brows furrowed. “Ex-girlfriends.”

“Yes?”

“Like, plural?”

“Yes.”

“Like, this is a thing that has happened to you more than once.”

“This may have escaped your notice prior to this exact moment in time, in which we are hiding out in Montana in the least-safe safehouse of all time and trying to hammer out exactly what lie we’re going to tell about an intergalactic diplomatic clusterfuck, but I am, occasionally, _every so often_ , a lot of trouble to be around.” Lucy spread her arms. “Consequently, the dating pool of my young adulthood was more or less exactly what you’d expect the dating pool of my young adulthood to have been. In my defense, it only happened like three or four times.”

“You caught the same girl cheating on you three times in a row and--”

“No, no. That would be insane,” Lucy snorted. “I caught like three or four different girlfriends cheating on me. Though it was with the same girl, so...”

“That still seems kind of insane,” Darcy said carefully. 

“I know. I should have just cut to the chase and started dating her. Especially since it usually led to a threesome, and she was _really_ \--”

“Wow.” Darcy put down the spatula and rubbed her temples. “I just got the worst sense of deja vu ever. I swear to God I’ve heard this exact story from Tony at least once.”

Lucy tilted her head and considered it for a moment. “Dude’s got a stripper pole in his private jet. Now that I think about it--which seriously, Lewis, I’m going to need some brain bleach after this--I’d actually be a little surprised if that hasn’t happened to him at least like, a dozen times.”

“You know what the funny thing about all this is?” Darcy asked.

“You’re still not drawing a salary for this shit?” Lucy guessed.

“No, that’s just really sad and a terrible commentary on the state of the economy for young adults,” Darcy said. “The funny thing about all this is that I’ve had to explain to a Nobel-nominee senior researcher that wearing pants in communal workspaces is the default expected behavior in a professional environment, and it hasn’t turned out to be the most TMI moment of my career.” Darcy flipped the pancakes, then swore when the batter ran. “Ugh. Can you--”

“Just use a paper towel,” Lucy sighed. “I am not magicking spilled pancake batter off a range for you. And I wouldn’t even be here right now if you and Stark hadn’t bought two tickets for Director Fury’s Wild Ride.” She cracked her knuckles. “This needs to make sense, is all I’m saying.”

“Except at least twenty percent of what you do makes no sense to an outside observer. I’m talking bare minimum here,” Darcy retorted, scowling as she wiped at the range. “You remember the time you vanished the Grand Canyon and sent the ransom demand to the governor of Arizona instead of the National Park Service?”

“That was a minor miscalculation,” Lucy said, erasing two of the larger question marks.

“But it kind of made you look like a crazy person,” Darcy pointed out. “Nobody realized you were after money for like a whole week. You were just running around disappearing miles and miles of national landmark for no apparent reason.”

“Fine. I was drunk, and also trying to get Russia to pay me not to marry the god of thunder off to an American.” Lucy scrawled a drawing of the Ukraine on the whiteboard where one of the question marks had been. “Happy?”

“Why Russia?” Darcy asked.

“They’re always up to something shady. Nobody’ll believe them when they deny it,” Lucy said simply.

Darcy nodded, then looked up. “Why are you scribbling all over the board?”

“I’m not scribbling. That’s Russia.”

“That’s...not even close to what Russia looks like. You know what? Never mind. I’m not burning these pancakes. Just write ‘Russia’ or something so I don’t have to think about what a bad idea this all was, please.” Darcy rubbed her eyes. “I’m not even sure I can get into an Ivy League school now. Or finish if I do. Online classes aren’t an option if you’re stuck in another dimension, and Erik has been talking about some really weird field studies coming down the pike.”

“So don’t go. Fake sick or something. And don’t look at me like that. I didn’t _ask_ you guys to blame this all on me,” Lucy groused, erasing the outline. She wrote ‘RUSSIA’ in block letters and surrounded it with dollar signs. “I especially didn’t ask you to half-ass blaming it on me. This is worse than the time you guys blamed me for stealing that tank and kidnapping Fury and Coulson.”

“You mean the thing that you completely and totally did?” Darcy asked. “The thing you’re on several traffic cameras doing because you really for-reals did it?”

“Clearly that evidence was faked,” Lucy said airily. “And also blurry. It could have been anyone driving them around in that tank.”

She chewed the marker cap and erased the timeline Darcy had written down. It didn’t particularly matter what had happened when; they weren’t talking to the police or making an insurance claim.

“Hey! I spent five minutes scrolling through my Instagram account to put that together!”

“We’re reinventing reality here, Lewis. Be flexible,” Lucy scolded. 

“You putting a whammy on Thor would still be the easiest explanation,” Darcy said. She flipped the pancakes again, more carefully this time. “I mean, it _could_ have happened, right?”

“Fuck if I know. Sif found it credible, but like hell I’m going back and asking her if that’s because Asgardians can pull that shit no problem or because she just doesn’t know the first fucking thing about magic. I don’t know if you noticed, but the crew he rolls with don’t really seem to know that much about how their own magicians operate, never mind earth-magic.” She doodled a pair of little wings around Thor’s name. “But I kind of feel like if Asgardians could do that no problem, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. It would have been like ‘I don’t want to go home, Midgard’s awesome, and also I’m in love with a mortal,’ followed immediately by ‘You are getting very sleepy. Midgard is not awesome, you definitely want to be king instead of dicking around with mortals all day, and you will settle down with a nice Asgardian girl who can drink a mule under the table’--”

“What?”

Lucy shrugged. “Or whatever criteria they use to figure out who’s the best person to marry the next person in line for the throne. I can only assume really bad ideas are involved, because Asgard. Anyway, as I was saying: alien hypnosis, followed by Thor going home. Or Amora would have just gone with that instead of the bullshit she pulled when Thor wouldn’t bang her. So basically I’d guess no, they can’t.”

Darcy frowned and chewed her lip. “I don’t think they’d have done that. He’s the crown prince, remember? That seems like it would pose a lot of really thorny political problems.”

“Well, they kind of turned him mortal and kicked him into a wormhole, so I’m going to have to go with they’d totally have done that, if they could.” Lucy mentally re-arranged the timeline and tried to think if any of the known events would discredit it. “Not that I don’t get where you’re coming from with that argument, I just don’t know if an all-drunk, all-the-time alien ruling philosophy would back it up.”

Lucy added a cartoon cloud to the board, and Darcy fiddled with the range settings.

“Will you please put the cap back on that before you dry it out?” she called.

“If it dries out, just stick it in water until the ink starts to bleed, then put the cap back on and give it like half an hour,” Lucy sighed. “Unless it’s permanent, in which case we really should not have used it on an old-ass whiteboard like this, and we’d use rubbing alcohol instead of water.”

“Why do you know that?”

“Old teacher’s trick,” Lucy said.

“Oh. Right.” Darcy frowned. “You can’t do anything like mind-control at all?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. “Not even a little?”

“Uh…” Lucy puffed out her cheeks. “It’s an interesting _theory_ , sure. But human minds tend to be really, um, squishy. In unpredictable ways. Like a non-Newtonian fluid. So it’s hard to take it seriously in terms of it happening in the real world with any kind of remotely predictable result. Not that I’m going to stand here and say it’s never happened or couldn’t happen or what the fuck ever, but I certainly wouldn’t try it.” She crossed out a few bubbles on the board. “I especially don’t want to advertise the possibility of me doing it, because that’s just bad marketing. And bad marketing in my line of work gets you shot at, so let’s just not for now, okay?”

“This isn’t marketing,” Darcy reminded her.

“Of course it’s marketing. For me, I mean. Presumably you and Stark don’t want to start advertising as a hostage or kidnapping victims, but for _me_ , yes, marketing. Was I not clear about that before? I felt like I was being really clear about that.” Lucy wrinkled her nose. “Pancakes are burning.”

“Damn it!” Darcy scraped the blackened discs off the frying pan and into the trash. “Why? Why is this my life?”

Lucy leaned over the counter and looked at the stove. “Because you’ve got it set on ‘surface of the sun.’ How do you not know to only use that setting if you’re boiling water?”

“You turn it all the way up, your stuff cooks really fast, you get to eat it really fast. This is not rocket science,” Darcy snapped. 

“No, it isn’t,” Lucy said. “Hence the question of how you can be a grown adult who’s in charge of stuff without knowing not to do that.”

“Erik usually takes care of any cooking that doesn’t require a microwave or toaster. I give up.” Darcy flopped onto the couch and grabbed the plate with the half-eaten pancakes on it. “Why is there jam all over these?”

“Because all you had for syrup is the fake stuff that’s made of fenugreek and ass,” Lucy sighed.

Darcy put the plate back on the table and closed her eyes. “You are a magician.”

“Yeah?”

“You could have just magicked up a bottle of whatever you wanted.”

Lucy sucked at her teeth. 

“It has been a really long week and, honestly, that just did not occur to me,” she admitted.

“And this is why I don’t really feel like you _need_ an explanation for why you engineered Operation Wedding Bells,” Darcy said, slouching back against the cushions. “You just breeze in and smear jam all over everything.”

“That’s your low blood-sugar talking, I’m pretty sure,” Lucy said brightly. “How about some cereal?”

Darcy’s eyes shot open. “What if half of it was an illusion?”

“Then it wouldn’t help with your low blood-sugar or your mood?”

She threw a pillow at Lucy. “What if half of everything _you did_ was an illusion?”

“Ehn. I’m not feeling that one. Illusions are cheap and effective, but they’re not really a crowd-pleaser.”

Darcy glared at her. “Not. Marketing.”

“Yes, marketing,” Lucy insisted. “You know what sort of work I could get right now? Like, maybe I could raise a Russian nuclear sub and go all Flying Dutchman with it for some third-tier player. Which I cannot even begin to describe how badly that sort of thing usually goes. So. Marketing is a _must_.”

“You could go into business for yourself,” Darcy suggested. “Isn’t that what every supervillain really wants? Be their own boss, set their own hours, have their own henchmen?”

“Actually running a crew is a pain in the ass,” Lucy said. “I mean, sure, if you’re big enough to have an HR department to handle the benefits and payroll and all that shit, it’s no sweat. But until you hit the point where that makes financial sense, and you’re doing it all yourself? Ugh. And once you get a decent-sized crew, you need equipment and shit, which means you need a base, and you know what happens to bases?”

“People like you trash them?” Darcy asked archly.

“People like me trash them,” she said firmly. “And people like you. And people like Foster. And people like Thor. Stark’s girlfriend occasionally takes time off from being the CEO of a gojillion-dollar company to randomly blow up bases. I mean, didn’t Coulson load your base into the back of a mack truck and drive off with it at one point?”

“He gave it back,” Darcy protested weakly. Lucy cocked her head. “Most of it. Eventually. After Thor made him.”

“Point being, you have a base, it’s getting launched into the Pacific Ocean by someone who shouldn’t even be there. Probably along with the three employees you have that are actually worth a damn. And seriously? I don’t rob banks because I want to spend all my free time shopping around for decent health insurance plans or listening to goons gripe about it not covering dental.”

“You could outsource that stuff,” Darcy pointed out. “They’ve got companies that just handle payroll and benefits for tiny companies that can’t afford a dedicated department.”

“Guess how many of those personnel-wranglers work with criminals,” Lucy snorted. “They don’t even pretend the call’s getting disconnected, either. You tell them your source of income is extorting western European tourist traps, and they just hang up on you.” Darcy raised her eyebrows, and Lucy cleared her throat quickly. “Or, you know, so I’ve heard.”

“You are such a poser sometimes, it’s not even funny,” Darcy told her.

*****

Thor sighed and ground the heels of his palms into his eyes. He’d expected some resistance from his parents. He hadn’t expected this sort of lunacy.

“Is there nothing I can say to persuade you that I was in command of my own actions?” he asked wearily.

“With Loki gloating over the fact that she bewitched you? No,” Sif grunted, rubbing her knuckles.

“You should know better by now than to let her bait you,” Thor said. “What she claims is beyond her power.”

“We know nothing of what’s beyond her power, Thor,” she snapped. “We don’t even know when we lost that knowledge.” 

Sif leaned back against the lintel and looked at the fire. She’d barely persuaded him to part with Jane, and now he was steadfastly claiming that the marriage had been all his idea. He seemed sincere enough, and she couldn’t help but think of the flicker of surprise in Lucy’s bloodshot eyes before the triumphant mask had snapped into place. Lying was second nature to the woman, but then so was precisely this sort of mischief.

“You don’t think she’d have used it before now if she had the skill?” he asked.

“The penalties would be severe, and she’d have to know it,” Sif pointed out irritably. “It’s not as if Lorelei is unique in her sorcery.” She shook her head. “What were you _thinking_ , Thor?”

“That my heart was my own to command,” he rumbled. “That it would cause less offense if my actions could be dismissed as those of a rash young prince too long out of his parents’ house.”

“Well, Loki’s certainly seen to it that the offense won’t be directed at the king,” Sif said. 

Thor frowned. “She had nothing to do with my decision, Sif. You must believe me.”

She pushed her hair out of her eyes and rubbed the back of her neck. The headache that seemed to accompany every quarrel they had over Thor’s errant sibling was coming strong and fast. “You know they’ll have no choice but to exile her for this.”

“To what end?” Thor protested. “It would be a feat worthy of Sigurd to persuade her to accept her rightful place here. An official banishment accomplishes nothing!”

“Practically, no. Politically?” Sif shook her head. “Inaction would make it seem as if Odin permitted it in the first place, or doesn’t object to the outcome. Between your deeds and her words, his hands are tied.”

“Her claims are false,” Thor said, pacing the room. “You must see that!” He stopped short and snapped his fingers. “Heimdall can corroborate my claims. He saw everything; he knows full well that Loki laid no enchantment on me.”

“Heimdall saw everything, Thor, but even his eyes cannot detect sorcery or its lack,” Sif said gently. “Especially when the sorcerer requires no tools or long preparations for most of her charms.”

Thor sat down heavily and put his head in his hands. “Any judgment given based on this would be unjust. Mother will not-- _cannot_ \--allow it.”


	87. Chapter 87

Odin leaned heavily on the table and glared at the map stretched across it without really seeing it. “You cannot mean it, Frigga.”

“I see no choice, my love,” Frigga sighed. “Rumor of this has already spread past Asgard. Either we can treat it as an act of war, or we can treat it as an act of treason. To do any less--”

“Could she have done it?” Odin appealed to the decapitated head sitting on the table.

“She may have the raw power required, but she has neither the wit nor the will nor the wisdom needed to command a god’s mind,” Mimir said dismissively. “Though I’m unsure of what this has to do with the efforts to free Surtur from his confines. Perhaps domestic concerns ought to be considered later, once the possibility of every realm being reduced to ash and dust has been thoroughly discussed?”

“You see?” he demanded. “She’s innocent of the charges.”

“She’s admitted to them,” Frigga reminded him gently. “And in doing so, she’s tied our hands.”

“I am the All-Father. My hands are tied in nothing,” Odin grunted. “Asgard is strong. We can weather a diplomatic storm.”

“What about a storm of fire?” Mimir asked sourly.

“Asgard is strong, but Asgard must also _appear_ strong,” Frigga said firmly, ignoring him. 

“I would sooner practice justice than simply appear to,” he retorted, stalking across the room. He pointed to the city below, its lights glimmering through the undraped window. “Our people depend on us--”

“Yes, they do,” Frigga interrupted sharply. “And I will not spend our warriors’ blood in fights which could have been avoided for no gain. Did she commit any crime? No, not in this instance. But she has admitted to a crime, and Thor’s marriage will anger those who hoped for a marriage alliance, and what will refusing to allow her to shoulder the blame accomplish? Nothing. We will not be believed. Thor will not be pardoned. She will not come home.”

Odin rubbed his beard and looked away. 

“How many times must we lose the same child?” he asked finally.

“At least once more, if Yggdrasill burns,” Mimir offered.

“Yggdrasill will not burn while Asgard is here to prevent it.” Frigga chafed her hands and held them up to the fire. It was banked and grated, but no less warm. “Try not to think of it as a loss. Thor’s banishment was temporary.”

“You have a plan, then?” Odin’s eye brightened.

“The beginnings of a plan,” Frigga said, grimacing. Loki had always reacted poorly to debts and restrictions when they were owed to others. A debt owed _to_ Loki had produced a very different reaction, however. “We shall see how wise it is. Hugin and Munin reported that the trouble is rooted in Midgard. Perhaps the more cunning of our two children will prove clever enough to be of assistance.”

“I will leave it in your hands, then,” Odin said, gathering her into a gentle hug.

*****

“See, Lewis?” Lucy asked, circling the total at the bottom of her column of figures. “You’d need to break six figures every month just to stay out of the red.”

“I still feel like you forgot to carry a one somewhere,” Darcy protested, waving her fork at the other side of the board. “There’s no way dental plans cost that much.”

“For Joe and Jenny Sixpack, no,” Lucy admitted. She flipped through the actuary table on the couch. “For a ‘security firm,’ where it’s sort of assumed your employees are getting hit in the face repeatedly or ten times more likely to be in really interesting car accidents or having amateur segway-jousting tournaments in their off-time, it’s astronomical. This is what I’m saying. There’s no such thing as gray-market security forces. You’re either secretly a front for SHIELD and making payroll that way, or you’re secretly running guns for dictators and making payroll that way. Deniable goons or members of the Legitimate Businessmen’s Club. Your third option is bankruptcy.”

“I’m pretty sure I could make it work,” Darcy said stubbornly. “I’ve already built up a lot of contacts in the industry.”

“You’ve built up contacts in the industry, or you know a lot of people who’d really like to go on a date with Thor? Because, voice of experience here, people don’t like it when they get the bait-and-switch.” Lucy made a face. “They get all ‘I thought I was auditioning for a movie, why are we robbing a bank?’, and then you’re all ‘How did you think Ron Howard financed all those projects, stop crying and pass the ammunition!’, and then they never speak to you again, even though you really hit it off at that party.”

“Ron Howard?” Darcy asked, sighing.

“Don’t give me that look,” Lucy snapped. “That NDA wasn’t worth the paper it’s printed on the second he ratted me out to the Nicaraguans.”

“Um…” Darcy stared at her, pancakes momentarily forgotten.

“And they weren’t even looking for _me_ ,” she said defensively. “Turns out they wanted to talk to that Russian chick with the sword. The X...Woman? Lady X-Man?” Lucy paused, frowning. “Neither of those sound right, but it seems kind of bullshit to just call them all X-Men, doesn’t it?”

“I’ll be sure to ask about it the next time Steve’s giving Ororo a strong talking-to about how child labor laws apply to superheroes,” Darcy said absently. She picked up her phone and started tapped away at the screen.

“Ororo’s the chick with the hair and the lightning?” Lucy asked, miming a lightning strike with her fingers.

“Uh-huh.”

“That work out well for him, does it?”

“Not even a little bit.” Darcy frowned. “So _why_ were the Nicaraguans looking for Magik?” 

“I guess the X-Men had smashed the dick out of one of their state buildings fighting with some asshole, from whom they technically were saving a lot of the city, and it was mostly her brother who’d broken stuff. So it was pretty bullshit to start with. They were hoping to guilt her into just rebuilding it for them, I think. The story got kind of garbled after I rolled off the plane hungover and looking for a fight.” Lucy shrugged. It hadn’t been a great week before she’d gotten on the plane, but the Nicaraguan army hadn’t helped matters. “I mean, I get it, they weren’t expecting somebody to turn their guns into semi-autonomous balloon animals, but I can’t imagine it would have gone much differently if they’d gotten her instead of me. Bait-and-switch, right? Nobody likes it. Don’t tell someone they’re going on a tropical vacation when you’re going to meet them with a bunch of soldiers and an official request from the state department in a language they can’t read.”

“Written Spanish isn’t that--”

“It was in Cyrillic!” Lucy said. “Seriously. They did their homework _there_ , but they never saw a picture of her? The whole thing was a joke.”

“Did you ever tell them you weren’t Magik?” Darcy asked, scrolling through search results on her phone. “Because I actually kind of remember that, and didn’t it really turn into a thing?”

“I feel like I really shouldn’t have to announce that I’m not a blond Russian with a great rack and a huge sword, Lewis. I feel like certain things should just be able to go unsaid in the realm of stateless actors and geopolitical mayhem.” Lucy shook her head and ambled back to the kitchen. “Like, also things I shouldn’t have to announce? I’m not Nick Fury. I’m not Captain America. I’m not that giant talking green dragon guy that ate that Vegas golf course--”

“Wasn’t that a movie?” Darcy asked. “ _Day of the Dragon_ or something?”

Lucy scoffed. “More like _Hour of the Dragon_. That fight was over real fast once the buffet’d been cleaned out and the repulsor blasts started up.”

“Are you sure this wasn’t when you were still exploring hallucinogens professionally?”

Lucy opened a few cabinets and rifled through their contents.

“Yes, Lewis, I am sure I didn’t dream the whole thing. It was eventually turned into a movie, yes. Some really awful thing starring Steven Seagal that spent like five hours exploring the deep inner conflict of washed-up Vegas valets and their estranged lounger-singer children before the dragon even shows up.” She shuddered. “It was like they forgot what kind of movie they were making until the ninety-minute mark. I was extremely drunk when I saw it, and it was still hard to sit through it. But the dragon was a real thing. Somebody--my guess is SHIELD, but it could have been the Nevada Gaming Commission--covered it up, but the lady I was working for at the time streamed the whole thing at me and basically accused me of doing it to get back at her because my last paycheck had bounced.” She gave up on the cabinets and started on the fridge. “Buddha on a trampoline, they didn’t set you up with anything fun, did they? Anyway, ask Stark about it sometime. He was there.”

“Your boss accused you of stomping Vegas with a dragon because of a bounced paycheck,” Darcy muttered to herself. “Of course she did. What did you say?”

“I said ask Stark about it sometime,” Lucy huffed. “He was there. Honestly, if you’re not going to listen--”

“No, what did you say when your boss accused you of doing it?” Darcy demanded. “Oh my god, there are pictures of the Nicaragua thing. You’re wearing aviators and a crop-top.”

“They were in style at the time,” Lucy protested. 

“None of this was ever in style,” Darcy retorted, trying to smother a laugh. “Jesus, I didn’t know they _made_ bottles of rum this big. This is like a _carboy_ of rum.”

“Rum’s cheap in Latin America. And you don’t remember when it was in style, because you were a toddler, but it was. That look was totally rock-and-roll, or I wouldn’t have been wearing it,” Lucy snorted. 

“I’m less than ten years younger than you,” Darcy pointed out. “If I don’t remember this because I was a toddler, you were a really tall middle-schooler.” She enlarged a photograph. “You turned their modernist courthouse into a Mayan temple?”

Lucy coughed and picked at her hem. “I tried to turn their huge pile of rubble back into a modernist courthouse, after we got over our little communication breakdown and they promised to make good on the tropical vacation deal. Is it my fault I got the wrong pile of rubble? No. Should they have been a little more specific about which pile of rubble they wanted turned back into a building? Yes. Were there regrets all around? Maybe. I mean, half the country was covered in rubble at the time. Anyone could have made that mistake.”

“You do know that voluntary intoxication isn’t a defense in most court cases, right?” Darcy asked. “And I guess you could have, I don’t know, fixed the mistake once you made it?”

“It’s expressly forbidden to damage archaeological artifacts pertaining to the country’s pre-European heritage. Also, the temple was much nicer. Not to cast aspersions on the local architects, but they showed me some pictures of the courthouse pre-Colossus, and it was pretty crap. Looked like a damn parking garage.”

Darcy shook her head and went back to scrolling. The before pictures of the building weren’t that bad, though the restored temple was definitely more impressive. “Wow. Magik is still a persona non grata in Nicaragua and Belize over this. What did you do in Belize?”

“Nothing that’s going to show up on an internet search,” Lucy said, sticking out her tongue.

“Oh. You blew up a dam.” Darcy looked up at her from her spot on the couch. “Isn’t that a little cliche? Even for you?”

“Fucking government records digitization projects,” Lucy muttered, rubbing her forehead. “No, it’s not a cliche. The dam wasn’t finished or functioning.”

“Did you tell Belize you wanted one million dollars before you blew it up? Were you petting a white Persian when you said it?” Darcy chuckled. “Did you kill the last James Bond?”

“No, no, and no. That was Zodiac, I think. And it was retaliation, not ransom.”

“What did Belize ever do to you?”

“Retaliation against Canada.”

Darcy rubbed the back of her neck. “I know you didn’t really go through a traditional education, but that is a catastrophic failure of geography.”

“It wasn’t Belize’s dam,” Lucy explained patiently. “It was Canada’s dam.”

“It was in Belize,” Darcy pointed out.

“Yes. It was a dam built _in_ Belize, by a Canadian company, who owned it. Didn’t they cover this in Bonkers International Energy Policy 101? It’s like the time we sold the Hoover Dam to the Chinese and then made them give it back by turning the Terracotta Army back on.”

“Why would you do that?” Darcy asked. “That’s just--”

“I didn’t!” Lucy interrupted. “So ha. That was all Strange. And I don’t know why he would do that, but if I had to lay money on it, I’d say it’s over Tibet. Guy’s had a real bug up his ass about it since he hired that--”

“Why would you blow up a Canadian dam in Belize,” Darcy clarified. “Selling the Hoover Dam and then basically stealing it back is actually kind of brilliant.”

She made a mental note to ask Strange about it later.

“Canada knows what it did.” Lucy paused. “Or at least, Canada sort of knew what it did. I guess that was actually a few months before the news about the Weapon X project broke in a big way? So Canada knew what it had done, afterwards.”

“You blew up a dam in Belize because of a secret Canadian experiment?” Darcy asked.

“Damn right, I did,” Lucy said. “This is why the general insurance policies for the sort of business you’re talking about are so damn high.”

“Because you have no sense of who’s responsible for what?” Darcy got to her feet and stretched.

“Because risk factors are substantial and inherently unpredictable,” Lucy said acidly. “I’m pretty sure the poor bastards building the dam were all about Belize being a politically stable country and nobody really having a beef with Canada, but then Canada was being secretly responsible for superpowered lumberjack-ninjas punching people’s bases into an active volcano with all their stuff still inside--”

“Wolverine never punched anyone’s stuff into a volcano,” Darcy said firmly. She could see him setting something on fire, but a volcano seemed a little showy for him.

“Who said anything about Wolverine?” Lucy asked, her brows furrowing. “Though, I mean, he probably has. Dude pulls some shit.” She poured herself a glass of water and snapped her fingers. “Abraca- _sprite_.”

“So syrup’s not worth it, but soda is?” Darcy groaned. “Couldn’t you have at least made it beer?”

“It’s a little early for beer for people who aren’t me, isn’t it?” Lucy snorted. “Anyway, it was Creed. _Creed_ punched my stuff into an active volcano. Which, yeah, sure, fine, it happens, but then maybe your dam gets blown up because that also happens.”

“Which one’s Creed?”

“Like, tall, even-furrier Wolverine.”

“Sasquatch?” Darcy pursed her lips. “I met him once. Hank and Jan had him down to see one of their new labs. He seemed really nice. I can’t see him going around throwing stuff into volcanoes unless somebody really has it coming.”

“No. Tall, even-furrier Wolverine with a worse temper,” Lucy said. “Like, he’s wanted for a million crimes and doesn’t do science at all. That guy.” She paused. “Is that a helicopter?”

“It sounds like one,” Darcy told her.

“Are you _expecting_ a helicopter, Lewis?” Lucy asked testily, pulling the curtains back.

“Nope,” Darcy said. She scrolled through her phone’s history, looking for any missed notifications or alerts. She stopped on one of the apps and rolled her eyes. “Though I probably would have been if I’d known you were using my account to play Words with Friends with Coulson and not playing Candy Crush. Why would you do that?”

“I was bored? Why, what’s the problem?” Lucy demanded, spreading her arms. It hadn’t even been as entertaining as she’d thought it would be.

“Well, for one, I’m not supposed to be contacting anyone without a damned good reason. For another, you didn’t use any words over three letters for half an hour, so he probably assumes that I’m in the middle of a hostage situation and trying to very carefully send the most subtle SOS in the history of ever,” Darcy groaned. “Or maybe that I was having a stroke and needed immediately medical assistance. Were you _deliberately_ trying to trash my stats? You ignored all the free spaces and double-score tiles.”

“I was just trying to ignore the tiles with the hidden bombs,” Lucy said. “It was a reasonable strategy.”

“That’s Minesweeper,” Darcy said, joining her at the window. “Wow, those guys do not look happy at all.”

“Which I think is my cue to bail.” Lucy cracked her fingers. “Or get into an embarrassing, huge fight with normal agents and...is that Dazzler?”

A pretty, statuesque blonde followed the SHIELD agents out of the helicopter.

“Oh my god, is it?” Darcy craned her neck and shoved Lucy partially out of the way. “Shit, it is.” She grabbed Lucy’s arm. “Can I come with you? Please? I promise not to argue about the dubious ethics behind dead-peasant insurance anymore.”

“Why are you trying to avoid Dazzler? She’s like, the dreamiest X-Lady,” Lucy said, grinning. She shook Darcy off and smoothed down her clothes. “She’s even a rock star. Also, she would totally know the answer to what you’re supposed to call a female X-Man. How do I look?”

“Like you got your ass kicked by somebody she goes out for drinks with once a month,” Darcy said sourly. “Come on, please? I can’t be here. I accidentally erased her first demo tape, and it’s been super-awkward ever since. And Coulson knows that, so either she requested this mission so that she could give me dirty looks during the entire debrief, or he sent her on this mission because he thinks I’m just screwing around because I’m lonely.” Darcy coughed. “Again.”

“Why would you do that to someone so pretty, Lewis?” Lucy asked, sighing.

“It was an accident! I would never have been playing with supermagnets around her office if I’d known she had sentimental personal items in there.” Darcy cleared her throat. “Though it was on the Helicarrier, and those do get blown up a lot, and in retrospect it probably wasn’t a great place to store that? So, please?”

“Fine, but if you barf on me, I’m dumping you off in Coulson’s office and letting you explain the whole thing to him.”

“I think we’ve established what happens when I might get yelled at for something you’re involved in,” Darcy snorted. “Oh, can we aim for Tucson? I really want a plate of decent tex-mex.”

“You just had pancakes.” Lucy shooed her away from the counter.

“I just had one pancake. One very unsatisfying pancake,” Darcy reminded her. “Come on, less chatting, more _bamf_ ing.”

The agents were jogging across the lawn now, and Darcy crossed her arms.

“Fine.” Lucy rolled her eyes. “But it doesn’t make that noise, Lewis.”

*****

Fury steepled his fingers and glanced down at the photos covering his desk.

“So we don’t think this is retaliation,” he said finally.

“Well, Stephen Strange has already gotten three texts about Operation Fiestaware, and Darcy instagrammed their lunch half an hour ago. So it’s unlikely to be any kind of real hostile action on Jones’s part. But I’m thinking we stick with the kidnapped-and-brainwashed story,” Phil sighed. “It will give us an out if there’s any property damage or PR flak, and Jones doesn’t seem likely to challenge it, if the one side of the whiteboard are any indication.”

“And she needs a damn accountant, if the other side is any indication. Who in their right mind puts together a benefits package for a mercenary outfit?” Fury shook his head. “That’s the whole point of running a paramilitary group in the first place. No damn paperwork.” He grimaced at the stack of forms in his inbox. “No responsibility. Everybody gets their cut, nobody has to worry about checking their paystub for appropriate tax deductions.”

“Sir?” Phil asked.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it, Coulson,” Fury grunted. “Hot lead and freedom. Guts and glory. No Congressional oversight committees.” A wistful look settled on his face for a moment, then he shook himself. “What’d the good doctor tell her?”

“Nothing she didn’t already know, which is a little surprising. I thought we’d kept that pretty tightly under wraps,” Phil said, his brows furrowing. “She seemed well-informed for someone who should have been completely in the dark over it.”

“Magicians are the biggest gossips in the business, and your girl’s like a drunken Disney princess with the magical talking animal friends who like to give interviews to reporters.”

Phil opened his mouth, then closed it again. “That is an appalling mental image, sir.”

“It is,” Fury agreed. “I pretty much had the same look on my face when Hill shared that particular insight. Feel free to share it with anyone you feel needs to hear it.”

Phil grimaced.

“Am I going to Tucson, sir?” 

“See if you can raise Lewis. Figure out where she is and whether or not she needs an extraction. Get eyes on Stark and Foster while you’re at it, just in case Jones is tying up loose ends.” Fury rubbed his chin and looked at the photos again. “Dental plans, Coulson. This woman is a maniac.”

“Aside from her arithmetic being off, it’s actually a very sound business plan, sir,” Phil said defensively.

“Except for the part where it doesn’t turn a profit, you mean?”

Phil shrugged. “Well, that’s where the off-books subsidies from somebody’s black-ops budget come in.”

Fury stared at him, and Phil stared back with the most guileless look he could manage.

“ _Phil_.”

“Sir?”

“Have you been encouraging Lewis?”

“If I don’t, she’ll just have people like Jones encouraging her instead,” he explained.

“You are hereby ordered to stop, Coulson.”

“Yes, sir,” Phil said easily. Fury’s jaw twitched.

“Do I also need to tell Hill to stop encouraging her?”

“I think ‘need’ would be strong wording, sir.”

“Dismissed, Coulson. You’ve got your orders.” 

Phil got to his feet, saluted, and made for the door. Fury grunted and picked up the phone, shaking his head. “Get me Hill.”


	88. Chapter 88

Lucy leaned against the wall and hummed to herself, bored, as Darcy tried on yet another pair of sunglasses. The bare-bones phone she’d picked up at one of the kiosks wasn’t big enough to play a game on effectively. The fashions on display were too generic and chintzy to hold her interest for long. The generic electronica on the store’s sound system looped through another relentless bass-drop, and Lucy rubbed her eyes. Shoppers wandered past the glass to her left, cheerful and oblivious, and she envied them. She’d assumed Coulson would have come barreling down on them to collect his errant asset over an hour ago.

“What do you think?” Darcy asked, nudging the round lenses down and peeking over the frames.

“I think I hate malls even more than I used to,” Lucy said, eyeing the skeletal and mis-proportioned mannequins with distaste. She waved her hand, and they transformed into white plastic replicas of Dr. Doom in various mid-rant poses.

“About the glasses,” Darcy said, heaving an exaggerated sigh. “Also, congratulations on somehow making them even creepier. Though I have to say, I did not know Doom could rock a skirt like that.”

“Thank you.” Lucy gave her a mocking bow. “You should check out SHIELD’s file photos from when he was going through his kilt and tunic phases. I mean, personally, he can fuck off to the Mariana Trench without a sub, but even I can’t deny he’s got like A-plus legs for a dude.”

“And the glasses?” Darcy wiggled her eyebrows.

“And the glasses are _fine_. The last _seven pairs_ you’ve tried on were _fine_. The only ones I didn’t like were the ones that just screamed ‘Hi, I’m on the run from a scary government agency and am definitely trying to defeat facial-recognition software, please notice me immediately.’ Or the ones with the weird plastic fruit on the frames. Those were just distracting.”

Darcy looked hurt. “They were cute. And I’m not on the run from a scary government agency. You’re on the run from a scary government agency. If I get picked up by a scary government agency, I can just blame everything on you.”

“Do I look like I’m on the run from anybody? No, I do not. I look like I need a sales assistant, because I’ve got some incredibly annoying questions to ask without having any intention of buying anything.” Lucy flipped through a rack of clothes idly, glanced around, and heaved an over-the-top, irritated sigh. She continued, more quietly, “Consequently, we’re being ignored to within an inch of our lives. You’re welcome.”

“I think we might be getting that treatment because you’re still kind of a mess,” Darcy pointed out. “Come on, let me buy you something that’s not...what you’re wearing.”

“It’s zombiepocalypse-chic,” Lucy protested, checking herself out in the mirror. She frowned and privately admitted that Darcy might have a point. “Fine. Here.”

She grabbed a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and tossed them to Darcy. The shop was empty except for the two of them and the sounds coming from the stockroom the indicated a clerk busy not dealing with them, but she suddenly felt uneasy.

“These are going to look like capris and a tent on you, respectively,” Darcy warned her, checking the sizes. “It really seems like a shame to shop in a store where nothing’s over a size ten and everything’s meant for tall skinny people and not get some use out of it, you know.”

Lucy added the sunglasses she’d rejected earlier as too big.

“Do you feel that?” she asked, rubbing her forearms. It was like a build of static electricity. It didn’t have the same feel on the tip of her tongue as Mjolnir’s lightning, and the warm fluorescents recessed all over the store weren’t flickering or humming along with her nerves.

“Feel what?” Darcy asked, making a duckface at herself in the mirror. She deposited the lot on the counter and rang the bell. “Hello? We’re ready to check out, please!”

A wary teenager appeared from the back room and gave her a close look. She rang Darcy up without giving her an opportunity to make small talk, then handed over her change and disappeared again.

“Okay, that was...weird,” Darcy said, frowning.

“She knows we’re trouble. You realize your shirt says ‘Property of SHIELD’ on the back, right?” Lucy asked, disappearing into a changing room. Darcy muttered something that sounded like ‘Goddammit’ on the other side of the doors, and Lucy pulled on the new clothes. She didn’t look half-bad, if she did say so herself. She certainly looked less conspicuous. She picked the tags off the sunglasses and hung them from the collar of her shirt, then hip-checked the door open.

“Did you want to…” Lucy stopped talking and took an involuntary step back when she saw Frigga. “Mother of god!”

“A pair of them,” Frigga agreed, her expression solemn. Lucy glared daggers at Darcy, who put on her best innocent look.

“I, uh, swear I had something for this,” Lucy muttered. Vaguely-planned speeches about having been responsible for everything crumbled like so much dust in the face of Frigga’s sadly disapproving face. “Can we, possibly just Lewis here, do something for you? Is this maybe a chance meeting?”

“No. Asgard needs you, child,” Frigga sighed, taking her hands. 

Lucy stumbled back like she’d been burned and tried to gather her wits. She’d expected more yelling and waving swords around, honestly.

“I’m pretty sure Asgard needs me like it needs another round of antibiotic-resistant VD,” she said quickly. “Maybe try Thor? I mean, if he’s not too busy being on his honeymoon. That I arranged.” She coughed. “Via mind-control.”

“You did no such thing,” Frigga told her. “And even if Thor weren’t currently...inconvenient...this is a task more suited to your skills.”

“Sure I did!” Lucy protested. She could feel a cold sweat starting on the back of her neck, and it irked her to find lying to Thor’s mother so difficult. “Just ask anyone but him. Back me up, Lewis.”

“I actually think I’m just going to go get a slurpee from the food court. You want me to get you anything?” Darcy asked guilelessly. Lucy groaned.

“I totally did, though,” Lucy said desperately. Frigga’s lips settled into a thin line, and she crossed her arms.

“By what means?” she asked.

“Um.” Lucy could feel the gears slipping. “What?”

“By what means did you accomplish this? What spells did you use to bind him to your will?” Frigga elaborated. It was, Lucy thought, a bit unfair. Hell if she was going to admit that she’d made it up, though.

“I used the ancient Earth-magic of…” She faltered and licked her lips.

“Reverse psychology?” Darcy suggested.

“Reverse psychology!” Lucy said triumphantly. She paused as what she’d just said sank in, then pinched the bridge of her nose. “For fuck’s sake, Lewis, just go get your slurpee.”

“I’ll get you a breakfast wrap,” Darcy promised. “All-Mother?”

“Nothing for me, thank you,” Frigga said solemnly. She turned back to Lucy and frowned. “Are we done with this foolishness?”

“I don’t have to prove anything to you,” Lucy muttered. It sounded petulant, and she knew it, but she didn’t care.

“That’s not entirely true, but it also has nothing to do with what we need to discuss,” Frigga said. “The nine realms are in deadly peril, and I believe you may be Asgard’s only hope.”

Lucy blinked at her, waiting for some twitch of an eye or the slow curl of a lip to indicate that she was joking. When none came, she rubbed her chin and sucked at her teeth.

“Okay,” she said finally. “So basically Asgard’s completely boned.”

“Young lady!” Frigga snapped, her eyes widening. Lucy hunched her shoulders against the wave of guilt and glowered at her.

“I’m not your kid. I’m not Asgardian. I have never _been_ to Asgard!” Lucy protested. “There is nothing you could possibly need done that I could possibly even begin to--”

“Midgardians are trying to wake an ancient evil. It threatens all, but Asgard would fall first. I need you to stop them,” Frigga explained, cutting off her excuses. She took a breath, and her tone was gentler when she continued. “Asgard would be in your debt.”

“Oh.” Lucy cleared her throat. “Well. I guess theoretically I could actually do something about that, if I wanted.”

“How much in her debt?” Darcy asked casually. 

Lucy almost jumped out of her skin. She whirled and glared at her. “Did you not just leave?”

“I was going to, but then you stopped yelling at me and this sounded really interesting?”

Frigga chuckled and shook her head. “Small wonder Jane enjoys your company so, Miss Darcy.” She looked Lucy in the eye and smiled sadly. “Very much in your debt. You could name your price, at a time of your choosing.”

“Ha!” Lucy scoffed reflexively. “What’s the catch?”

“The danger is grave,” Frigga said. “I’m imposing no conditions. If you stop them, whatever you wish is yours, so long as it’s in my power to give it.”

“You’d, say, leave me alone?” Lucy asked archly. “No more drunken Asgardians bellowing ‘Sister! We must have words!’ on my porch at two in the morning just because I broke every parking meter in Chicago? No more unannounced appearances while I’m clothes-shopping with Lady Stockholm Syndrome here?” Darcy made an angry noise. “No more enraged Sifs dragging me out of after-after-after-after-parties by the arm because I’ve done something dishonorable and they need to make my hangover way worse over it?”

“If that is truly what you wish,” Frigga conceded. “Perhaps you should sleep on the matter, though. The time may come when you need assistance, allies, or gold more than you need an uninterrupted night’s sleep.”

Lucy swallowed, momentarily stalled. Frigga’s eyes would likely get even more grief-stricken if she stuck to her guns, which didn’t bother her in the slightest. Or at least, she was sure she could make that true if she just tried harder to believe it. But she hadn’t gotten as far as she had without playing it smart every once in a while, and she had the feeling that she could get most of what she wanted just by being able to pull that trigger.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Lucy admitted. “I mean, Thor can be really annoying when he wants to be, so I’m probably going to go with the whole interdimensional restraining-order thing, but you make a good point. So, what is it exactly that you need done?”

*****

Phil licked his lips, took a deep breath, and tried again. “Look, Samantha, it’s very important that we find these two women before anything bad happens. Are you sure you can’t tell us anything more than what they bought and that they paid cash? You were in the store the entire time.”

“Yeah, but I watch the news,” Samantha said, crossing her arms and leaning back against the register. “And I know when Asgardians show up in your store, you’re not getting paid enough to deal with whatever they’re going to do. Like, I don’t think _you’re_ getting paid enough to handle Asgardians. I’m definitely not. So I spent most of the shift in the stockroom, texting my besties to make sure somebody deleted my browser history before my parents found my computer if I didn’t make it when they decided to get into a fight with Baron von Murderface ten feet away from me and suddenly magic hammers are just flying everywhere.”

“You can configure most browser’s settings to do that automatically,” Phil told her. “Neither of the women in question are Asgardians. Thor is the only one who can summon Mjolnir. There’s no such person as Baron von Murderface.”

“Whatever.” Samantha rolled her eyes. “Then why were they having a big stitch-and-bitch session in the middle of the store with Thor’s mom?”

“What?” Phil asked. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, but SHIELD hadn’t received any communiques about incoming Asgardian royalty.

Samantha tapped at her phone, then showed him a photo inviting him to vote on whether the All-Mother or a French starlet had worn a gown better. “That lady? Thor’s mom? If they weren’t Asgardians, why were they having a big meeting with her about some guy named Suture trying to blow up existence?”

“I don’t know,” Phil sighed, “but you’ve been very helpful. Thank you, Samantha.”

*****

“Can I just point out that you were surprisingly reasonable about that whole thing?” Darcy asked. Lucy gave her a sidelong look and slouched down even farther in the passenger seat.

“What can I say? ‘Existence’ is where I keep my stuff. And myself. And like everything I’ve ever done.” She still wasn’t sure why Frigga had decided to ask _her_ for help, when she could have the entirety of SHIELD at her beck and call if she wanted. If Surtur was as dangerous as Frigga said--and Lucy didn’t think she was deliberately lying, even if she wasn’t necessarily telling the truth--this seemed like the sort of situation where the best and the brightest were wanted over the nearest fake family member. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive? It’s been like three hours.”

“I want to get there in one piece, and you have no respect for stop signs,” Darcy pointed out. “And you get into week-long car chases for kicks.”

“A, that was one time, and B, it was not a week,” Lucy huffed.

“You’ve only been in one car chase?” Darcy asked, snorting.

“Well, only one made it onto the news,” Lucy admitted. She stretched restlessly and then wedged herself back into the seat. “I still don’t know why you even insisted on driving.”

Darcy glanced at her incredulously. “You don’t know why I insisted on driving instead of climbing into that tiny flying coffin with five tons of coke and whatever was in those bottles--”

“Ayahuasca,” Lucy supplied. “And it was like fifty kilos.”

“Well, that makes it so much better, doesn’t it?” Darcy asked, rolling her eyes.

“You say it like the lady flying it _wasn’t_ DEA,” Lucy said defensively. “She’s a really great pilot! She’s been doing this forever! There was zero chance of running into trouble, and we’d have been there by now.”

“I’m not going on a ride-along with an undercover DEA drug-smuggler just to save myself a few hours of driving,” Darcy told her. “They actually get like shot and car-bombed at a decent rate, and also does Truth or Dare even have an airport?”

“Truth or Consequences,” Lucy snorted. “And no, but it doesn’t need an airport, because Cessnas can land anywhere it’s pretty flat. And anyway, her entire supply-chain is DEA. The guy growing the coke is DEA. The women’s commune packaging it is DEA. The train running it through Mexico is owned by the DEA. The nice married couple who’ll be picking it up from her at the abandoned suburb in Kansas, whose Christmas-card list I somehow got on and now I know their baby is fucking adorable? He’s DEA, and she’s CIA. The people dealing it are DEA. The people buying it are probably sketchy plainclothes local cops, but I mean, right up until then it’s risk-free.”

“And that is why I don’t like paying taxes,” Darcy grumbled. She reached for the McDonald’s bag on the floor by Lucy’s feet, and Lucy snatched it away.

“Eyes on the road, Steve McQueen,” she said. “What do you want?”

“The cheeseburger.”

Lucy pulled it out, partially unwrapped it, and handed it to her. “It’s actually pretty elegant, if you think about it. Your budget depends on there being this problem, so you make sure it’s suitably huge whenever someone starts talking cuts. It’s like the opposite of the time I tried to make a little scratch off peyote and wound up flooding the fucking market. Three months right down the drain.”

“High school economics went right over your head, huh?” Darcy asked, taking another bite of cheeseburger. She wound up with a gob of ketchup on her cheek, and Lucy passed her a napkin. “What’s even in this place? I thought we needed to go to Montana.”

“There’s not really a ‘we’ here, Lewis. You can bail whenever you want,” Lucy reminded her. “And I do need to go to Montana, but there’s something I need in New Mexico first.”

“What?” Darcy asked suspiciously. “Because if you say ‘booze,’ we’ve passed like five million liquor stores since we left Tucson.”

“You’ll know it when you see it,” Lucy chuckled.

*****

“Pepper, baby, honey, I _promise_ there is nothing to worry about,” Tony said smoothly. “I cannot even begin to tell you how much Fury is overreacting to this.”

Her eyes went to the muted MSNBC special on Thor and Jane’s marriage playing on half of the far wall, and he killed the feed with a gesture. A chapel videographer’s footage of Jones’s illusions was cut off mid-pan, leaving them with a suddenly unobstructed view of the Pacific. Tony brightened.

“You know what? Let’s just hit the beach today,” he said. “Call in sick, set everything to forward to our phones. Just you and me and five hundred of our favorite paparazzi. It’ll be fun.”

“I’d worry less if you’d worry a little more,” Pepper sighed, her lips twisting. “I’ve seen her file. She could kill you without even meaning to.”

“She can also bring people back from the dead--”

“Poorly,” Pepper countered.

“--and she’s cash-motivated--” 

“She holds a grudge, Tony.”

“--and Thor wouldn’t let her do anything too horrible.” He leaned up to kiss her on the forehead. “And it was just a warning. If they were really worried that Jones was out to get me, Coulson would be here with Darcy, and he’d be on the phone with Dr. Strange, and they’d probably be surrounding the house with salt and sage bundles and weird hippy stuff like that.”

Pepper kneaded her temples. “Just promise me you’ll be careful, please? Don’t do anything rash.”

“I’m not rash! I’m the opposite of rash. Cool, calm, considered. One hundred percent.” He grinned and spread his arms. “When have I ever been anything but?”

“Your entire life,” Pepper retorted easily, her voice warm with long-suffering affection. Tony made a face at her, then shook his head.

“Would it help if I told you I’m pretty sure we were playing into some grand scheme of hers?” he asked, sobering a little. “I got the feeling she had some angle she was working, and I’d lay large amounts of money on this not being an outcome she’s even a little mad about.”

“You lay large amounts of money on literal dice-rolls, Tony,” Pepper reminded him. She took a deep breath and visibly forced herself to relax. “You really don’t think she’s going to come after you?”

“Steal my wallet again? Yes. Turn the armor into taffy? Not outside the realm of possibility. Impersonate Christiane Amanpour live on CNN to tell everyone that, in a surprising and controversial move, Stark Industries is now producing nothing but slinkies?” He paused, his brows furrowing. “I’m actually a little shocked she hasn’t done that one already.”

Pepper’s eyes widened. “Don’t even joke! We’d have to spend the next month doing damage control and nudging the stock prices back up.”

“See?” he chided. “There are worse things she could do than turn me into a newt.”

Pepper chuckled weakly, and he drew her into a hug.

“Whatever she’s up to, it’s not about me. Personally, I think she just needs to piss SHIELD off every so often. She gets itchy if she falls off their hundred-most-wanted list and has to go knock things over until someone pays attention to her. She’s like if cats had magic.” Tony rested his chin on her shoulder and shoved his nose into her hair. “You smell really nice today. You sure we can’t just ditch everything and go to the beach?”

“Tony Stark, you are absolutely shameless,” she laughed. It was genuine and warm this time, and she slipped her arms around his waist. “Maybe a mental health day wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”

Tony groaned when his phone buzzed, and Pepper sighed.

“You should probably get that,” she said reluctantly.

“Probably,” he agreed, not moving. “It’s probably important.”

“Tony…” Pepper wriggled out of his arms. “Just make sure it’s not Godzilla stomping San Francisco or Coulson telling you to get to a safe-room now, please?”

“Can’t Godzilla be Namor’s problem for once? It’s a mutant marine iguana, isn’t it?” Tony groused, crossing to where his phone was industriously trying to vibrate itself off the table. He caught it just as it rattled off the edge.

“In addition to being completely imaginary, it is indeed a mutant marine iguana,” Pepper confirmed.

Tony frowned thoughtfully and looked back at her. “Is it? I could have sworn the giant green lizard with the big ear-fins and the yelling was a real thing.”

“Godzilla doesn’t have ear-fins,” Pepper told him. “And it just sort of roars and breathes atomic blasts.”

“No ear-fins?” Tony echoed. There was an incoming picture from Darcy. “I could have sworn Godzilla had ear-fins. And talked.”

“Not Godzilla,” Pepper insisted. “JARVIS, back me up.”

The ocean view disappeared behind a still-muted black and white video of a man in a rubber lizard suit stomping a scale model of Tokyo.

“Huh,” Tony murmured, opening the photo. “No ear-fins. He’s a lot chunkier than I remember, too. And no wings. Or pants.”

“Why on earth would an atomic monster rising out of the sea to punish mankind’s hubris be wearing pants?” Pepper asked.

“Well, I’d assume because atomic monsters rising out of the sea to punish mankind’s hubris still have a sense of modesty and decorum,” Tony said glibly. He tilted his head at the video, then shook himself. “Maybe I’m confusing it with something I watched in college.”

“You must be. Have I ever steered you wrong?” Pepper laughed. She caught the way he started when the photo finally came up on his phone. “Tony? What is it?”

Darcy was standing in front of a SHIELD cargo plane, waving at the camera. Another text followed as he was trying to puzzle out the picture’s meaning. 

“‘Last one to Montana’s a rotten egg?’” he muttered. The message was followed by a set of coordinates. He rolled his eyes, then looked up to meet Pepper’s questioning gaze. “Looks like I’m needed in Montana. Nothing serious, but it sounds like time’s a factor. Rain-check on the beach?”

“I’ll see if I can figure out what giant green monster you’re confusing for Godzilla in the meantime.” Pepper kissed him gently. “Be careful, okay? I know you don’t think much of magic, and I know you think this woman’s not a threat right now, but just...be careful. Promise me.”

“I promise.”


	89. Chapter 89

“Why did this need to involve me, exactly?” Tony asked. “Pepper made me pinky-swear to behave, Montana is my third least-favorite state, and this looks like the worst idea either of you have ever had.”

Darcy looked from him to the giant truck with ‘Bruno Zacchini’s Super Repeating Cannon’ helpfully painted on the side of the enormous cannon mounted on top of it. Lucy’s head appeared in the cab’s window, her sunglasses perched on top of her head.

“I’m wondering the same thing, actually,” she said.

“Okay, you can just shush,” Darcy told her. “You got to rope SHIELD into flying this monster halfway across the continent, I get to call someone to check your math.” She turned to Tony. “Come _on_. You cannot possibly _not_ want in on this. Look at it!”

She spread her arms, her eyes going from the cannon-truck to the mine at the bottom of the steep-sided basin below.

“Stealing a human cannonball rig from a carnival isn’t that big an accomplishment. Carnies’ security is notoriously terrible. It probably happens like fifty times a year.” Tony rapped his knuckles on his armor. “Also, I kind of turned myself into a human rocket almost a decade ago, so it takes a lot to impress me at this point.”

“We didn’t steal it,” Lucy told him.

“ _She_ stole it,” Darcy clarified. “I watched from the rental car.”

“I didn’t steal it either,” Lucy snapped. “The dude who had it owed somebody who owed me money. I left an IOU. He clears his debt, they clear their debt, I get a human cannonball launcher, everybody’s happy.” She clambered on top of the cab and raised the binoculars she had slung around her neck. “Except these guys. These guys are pretty fucked.”

“IOUs aren’t fungible,” Darcy pointed out.

“Since when?” Tony asked. “And why are you helping Jones smite her enemies?”

“Since forever. IOUs are not currency. This is the whole entire point of cash,” Darcy sighed. “Lucy?”

“Why are you asking me? I just gave you my read on it,” Lucy snapped. “And cash and debt are both transferable in underground economies, which is pretty much definable in this instance as anything you can’t sue to recover in small claims court. You know how sympathetic a judge is to ‘My mercenary boss bounced my last paycheck for providing security for her illegal operations’? Like, zero sympathy. Like, if resting bitchface was a summary judgment, that’s how much sympathy you get.”

“They were pretty sympathetic to Academi when--” Tony began.

“I meant could you please tell Tony exactly what we’re doing here,” Darcy clarified.

“Oh.” Lucy lowered the binoculars. “We’re blowing up a mine.”

Darcy glared at her.

“Because Thor’s mom hired us to,” Lucy elaborated. “Happy?”

“The Queen of Asgard hired you to blow up a…” Tony flipped down his visor for a few seconds, then flipped it back up. “...a defunct tin mine in East Nowheresville, Montana? Have you ever considered doing a few less drugs, just as an experiment?”

“The Queen of Asgard asked us to stop a primordial menace to all of existence,” Darcy said coldly, glowering at Lucy. “We’re totally being heroes right now. On purpose and everything!”

“She promised to pay me,” Lucy reminded her, “ergo, hired.” She glanced at Tony. “The Asgardians stuffed something incredibly nasty down the memory-hole back before the dawn of time, and now some local asshole is trying to let it back out. They succeed, everybody has a very bad day indeed.”

“Did they stuff it down a defunct tin mine in East Nowheresville, Montana?” Tony asked. He frowned at a trio of canisters roughly taped together into a cylinder. “And is that nitroglycerin?”

“What am I, a complete lunatic?” Lucy demanded. “It’s TNT.”

“Oh, well, that’s much better.”

They stared at each other.

“Was that sarcasm?” Lucy asked. “Because…”

“Yeah, I apologize,” Tony sighed. “It kind of was, but it shouldn’t have been. Please don’t transmute it into a giant pile of nitroglycerin just to spite me.”

“If you two are done being toddlers at each other?” Darcy asked archly. “No, Tony, _obviously_ the Asgardians didn’t stuff a primordial fire monster down a defunct tin mine.”

“And it’s not actually a tin mine,” Lucy interrupted. “Or defunct.” She jerked a thumb at the equipment scattered over the basin’s floor. “Ever wonder where the vibranium scraps for Captain Hotpants’s shield came from?”

“Is the incredibly unbelievable answer going to be ‘that mine’?” Tony asked. “Because I don’t think the Asgardians stuffed a fire monster down an active vibranium mine, either. They use them to guard their arsenals, blow up small towns, and passive-aggressively register noise complaints. Also, since when do we have a vibranium mine?”

“That’s more of a fire robot,” Darcy pointed out. “And since World War II.”

“The monster is in a sort of weird fold between space and time,” Lucy said. “But the device whoever’s trying to let it out needs in order to open a door is going to take, drum roll please, a comparative shitload of vibranium.”

“And that led you here?” Tony sighed.

“There are three logical sources,” Darcy told him, shading her eyes against the sun. “Not great sources, but enough to give these guys what they need.”

“One’s in Russia, and it’s controlled by a front for the KGB,” Lucy said, holding up three fingers. “So that means Putin, which means weapons. So cross that one off the list, right?”

“Sure,” Tony agreed easily. “Why would we possibly need to worry about that?”

“Exactly.” She folded down one finger. “So the second is in Greenland. I checked that while Lewis was busy being airsick at a SHIELD agent, just in case. That one literally does have a primordial monster stuffed down it, and it’s asleep, so obviously not that one.” Lucy folded down another finger. “This one, though--”

“Wait, what?” Darcy asked.

“Wait, what _what_?” Lucy rolled her eyes. “I was in the middle of the third point, which is why we’re blowing this place up.”

“You left that part out!” Darcy said. “You just popped back and said that one was clear. And now you tell me it’s got an honest-to-god monster in it?”

“Yeah,” Tony said reluctantly. “If you’re looking for a monster with a lot of vibranium, and then you find a monster in a vibranium mine, I think you may be overlooking the obvious here.”

Lucy tapped a cigarette out of a box and lit it. “Look, you want to go another five rounds with the asshole that tried to eat Vegas that one time, be my guest. You want to spend the next calendar year getting reamed out by Coulson, Fury, Hill, and whoever managed to stick it down a hole in Greenland where it can’t do things like eat Vegas again, be my guest. But I have to assume that the sort of monster _you_ can take on while half-drunk and living the solo career dream is not the sort of monster that gets the immortal god-queen of an alien dimension hiring people to deal with it lest all of existence be snuffed out in a rain of fire and blood.”

“What are you talking about?” Tony sighed.

“The dragon-looking asshole you fought in Vegas?” Lucy asked. “That’s what’s snoozing away in the Greenland mine.”

“I never fought--”

Lucy pulled out her phone and scrolled through it, then crouched and held it out so he could see the picture.

“Godzilla!” Tony exclaimed, his eyes going wide.

“Godzilla’s not a real thing,” Darcy said, standing on her tiptoes and holding onto his shoulders so she could see. “Wow, they did kind of an okay job on the special effects in the movie version of the Vegas thing.”

“Yeah, not Godzilla. The SHIELD files Lewis dug up on the site called it Fin Fang Foom, but that might just be what it was yelling while it was stomping around trying to smack you out of the sky,” Lucy told him. “For all we know, it’s dragon for ‘eminent domain.’”

“I thought that was the name of the mountain?” Darcy asked.

“Maybe it is now?” Lucy said, shrugging. “I mean, that’s how Mount St. Helens got its name. Just hundreds of St. Helens, all--”

“I don’t think--” Tony interrupted, shaking his head.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Lucy rebutted, “as you can _clearly_ see, nobody’s getting shit out of that mine without one hell of a headache. So that leaves this one, which, again, as you can see, is fully fucking operational.”

“For the moment,” Darcy added.

“Yes, for the moment.” Lucy nodded.

“What are you talking about?” Tony demanded, rubbing his eyes.

Lucy looked pointedly from the mine to the TNT to the cannon. “Dude. I don’t seriously need to draw you a fucking diagram, do I?”

“Not that,” Tony snapped. He pointed to the phone. “ _That_. Fin Fang Foom. I never fought that thing.”

“I watched someone or something wearing one of your suits fight it on live telecast,” Lucy said. “Back when you first started out with this hero bullshit. But I honestly don’t fucking care right now, so fine, have amnesia or brain damage or a secret clone or whatever. I don’t care. The point is, we’re blowing up a deep-sixed secret government vibranium mine with a human cannonball launcher and a bunch of TNT.”

“To save the universe,” Darcy said quickly.

“Well, if it’s for a good cause,” Tony snorted. He tapped his phone against Lucy’s, and the picture copied to his screen.

“You have the creepiest apps on that thing, I swear.” Lucy shook her head. 

“Can you forward me the files on this thing?” Tony asked Darcy. She shrugged.

“Sure.”

“Don’t encourage him, Lewis.”

“Don’t encourage Lewis to blow up American government mines to save the universe,” Tony countered, tapping furiously at his phone. “Wait til Pepper gets a load of this. I knew I wasn’t just imagining it.”

“This is only Phase One of saving the universe,” Lucy told him. “But once we take care of this, the rest of it is sheer elegance in its simplicity.”

“And now we’re right back to the crazy supervillain talk.” Tony scanned the mine in greater depth this time.

“Blowing up a mine delays them, it doesn’t stop them,” Lucy pointed out irritably. “But blowing up a mine means that now they have to start buying vibranium, which is fucking rare and fucking expensive. Which means there’s gonna be a lot of money suddenly flying around in a very small market, which means we’ve got somewhere to trace it back to, which means we can find out who’s responsible way more easily and, most importantly, way more _quickly_.”

“It’s not a race,” Darcy reminded her. “The important thing is not dying, remember?”

“Yeah, but Thor’s not going to be grounded-slash-on his honeymoon forever, and I really want to get this wrapped up before he turns up to try to hug it out or something.” Lucy wrinkled her nose. The idea of getting into a giant argument with Thor about anything at the moment was extremely unappealing.

“I feel like you’re forgetting a pretty big flaw in this plan,” Tony said drily.

Lucy shook her head. “Nah. We reinforced the air compressor. Since it’s TNT and not a human being, we don’t need to worry about keeping the acceleration within safe tolerances--”

“Not the maximum range on the cannon,” Tony groaned. “Wakanda, dumbass.”

Lucy blinked at him and took a long drag off her cigarette. “Dude, if they take _themselves_ off the fucking board by going after Wakanda, drinks are on me.”

“Yeah, that actually would be sheer elegance in its simplicity,” Darcy agreed.

“You’re deliberately kicking the hornet’s nest that is the black market for vibranium to see what happens, because you’re trying to find people who the Asgardians are worried about accidentally blowing up the universe--”

“Not accidentally,” Darcy said. “It’s pretty much a death cult.”

“I mean, the peons are probably just in it for the money,” Lucy added. “It’s hard to get a private army of dudes as messed up as the suicide scientists--”

“The who?” Tony asked.

“Those AIM guys that complete their theories, turn over their data, and then off themselves? I mean, I feel like the division name is preeeeeeetty self-explanatory?” Lucy scoffed.

“How is that a real thing?” Darcy asked, grimacing. “I’ve met a lot of scientists, and I’m just not seeing it.”

“It’s AIM. You know, the organization that won’t stop building MODOKs at everybody. What do you want?” Lucy shrugged. “Anyway, obviously, even AIM doesn’t get a lot of volunteers for that one. Something like this, especially when the guys in the know are looking at it like people won’t even know their names or what they did? Hard sell. So once the blinders come off, SHIELD’s probably going to see a lot of rats off the ship and underlings looking to roll. In the meantime, the guys at the top are absolutely down with burning the world.”

“So let’s dial it back to the part where you’re not planning on giving Wakanda a courtesy call to let them know why they’re suddenly seeing a five thousand percent increase in border violations by scumbag profiteers working for an actual doomsday plot,” Tony suggested brightly.

“I feel like the less Wakanda’s got my number, the better?” Darcy hedged.

“And I feel like if they wanted a courtesy call on something like this, they probably shouldn’t have--”

“If you’re about to cite anything that happened while you were working for an international terrorist organization, just be advised that I’m going to have even less sympathy than a small claims court judge,” Tony warned.

Lucy flipped him off. “--legally recognized Thor’s claim that we’re family. Like, seriously, what fucking business is it of theirs?”

“I think that was part of his back-up plan to keep you out of a CIA blacksite?” Tony offered.

“Whatever.” Lucy blew a few strands of hair out of her eyes and dusted off her hands. “You gonna help, or not? Because the fake teambuilding seminar we diverted the miners out to isn’t going to keep them forever.” 

“Yeah, there’s only so long a birthday clown can keep a group of adults occupied, even when the alternative is going back down a mineshaft,” Darcy said. She checked the clock on her phone. “And I feel like we’re probably running up against it pretty hard right now?”

“Well, I had a bunch of kegs dropped off, so technically we could take that time and double it,” Lucy told her. “But I only hired the clown for the two hours, so.”

“So long as we’re talking about our feelings, I feel like the last thing you needed was a helper monkey, Jones,” Tony sighed. 

“Hey!” Darcy exclaimed.

“Pick less ridiculous people to sidekick for, Darcy,” he said. 

“She’s not my sidekick, Stark.”

Tony checked the trajectory on the cannon, then climbed into the cab to adjust it and wrinkled his nose. “Ugh. Did you have to spend the entire trip from wherever you dug this up smoking in it?”

“I don’t smoke menthols,” Lucy retorted. “And I could have spent a week straight smoking in it without generating that, never mind a plane ride from New Mexico. I’m frankly offended that you think I could. _That_ is the collected funk of like forty years on the stuntman and carnival circuit.”

“Whatever it is, I’m going to have to steam-clean it out of my armor,” he grumbled. “You do know a radio detonator probably isn’t going to work down a mineshaft full of vibranium dust, right?”

“It’s rigged to a hypsometer,” Lucy explained. “Once it hits a certain point below ground level, kaboom. On to Phase Two.”

The cannon inched up another five degrees. “That should do it.”

Tony pulled out his phone. “And now, I’m calling Coulson, so he can warn Wakanda.”

“Okay, sure. You do realize if you route this through SHIELD, they’re going to funnel the independent agents toward one point so they can try to sneak in on the other front, right?” Lucy asked.

Tony stopped and groaned. “They totally would, wouldn’t they?”

“Yup.”

“They’d be violating their charter if they didn’t, I think,” Darcy agreed.

“And then you’re the asshole that gave them the idea,” Lucy snickered. “Good luck explaining that the next time you see the dude in the panther suit.”

 

“Shit.” Tony puffed out his cheeks. “Wait, don’t they already know about this?”

“How would they already know about this?” Darcy asked.

“Well, they didn’t just hand a consultant and a wanted felon a cargo plane and say have fun, did they?” Tony asked, crossing his arms.

“No, of course not. That would be idiotic, even for them,” Lucy agreed. “They handed a cargo plane to a consultant and Special Agent Dazzler.”

She gave him a big, fake grin, and suddenly he was looking at Alison Blaire. He blinked, and she was back to normal.

“And they didn’t bother checking to make sure you _were_ Dazzler.” Tony’s lips pursed. “Their security is really not what it used to be, is it?”

“Well, that’s the thing about agents with powers,” Lucy explained, hopping off the cab. “Badges can be faked. Papers can be faked. All sorts of things, as it turns out, can be faked. Powers, on the other hand? A bit harder to fake.”

“Uh-huh.” He sat on the bumper, and the truck’s suspension creaked. “Except not for you.”

“Except not for me,” she agreed.

“So you stole the plane from SHIELD.”

“We borrowed-without-permission the plane from SHIELD,” Darcy protested.

“That implies we’re giving it back, Lewis,” Lucy pointed out.

“We will eventually,” Darcy said, pouting. “Once we’re finished with it.”

“You’re both a terrible influence on each other, you know that?” Tony sighed.

“I’m not the guy at the gate demanding a personal laser-light show instead of ID,” Lucy said, spreading her arms. “Anyway, long story short, SHIELD doesn’t know what we’re up to.”

“Actually, that gives me an idea,” Darcy said, snapping her fingers. “Why don’t you call Ororo?”

“Why would I call Ororo?” Tony asked, making a face. “I swear, she keeps track of how many times she’s nerfed me with that lightning. She made it rain on me at a press conference one time. Did you know that? Just a teeny tiny little rain cloud, right over me. Nobody else.”

“Was the press conference on something super-douchey?” Lucy asked. “Because if it was, not only is that hilarious, but also? Zero sympathy. Small claims court judge sympathy.”

“When have I ever--”

“Oh, my god. I remember that,” Darcy laughed. “You were being so douchey. It was right after you declared yourself a futurist and decided you were going to dispatch little drones with aerosol vaccines across Africa, wasn’t it?”

“How was I supposed to know how many African countries have functional governments right now and don’t need help with that sort of thing?” Tony protested.

“I think it was less that they didn’t want the help and more that part of being in control of a country is not having private-citizen foreign-nationals randomly pre-empt your airspace without even asking first,” Darcy told him. “I mean, that’s a pretty big thing when you’re trying to convince everyone you’re a real country. ‘Can this one guy completely piss all over your border security just because he felt like it?’ Maybe not number one priority, but pretty far up there.”

“Right,” Tony said, grimacing. “You know, it was a proposal, not a plan.”

“As someone who also has no idea how many African countries have functional governments right now, I feel like I should point out that the UN keeps publicly-available and user-friendly statistics on that sort of stuff,” Lucy told him. 

“Okay.”

“It’s a pretty useful thing to consult before taking on a job in what turns out to be a foreign hellhole, or just in case you don’t feel like helping a mercenary outfit secretly being backed by SHIELD overthrow a flowering democracy.”

“ _Okay_.” Tony put his hand to his forehead. “Anyway, the point is, Ororo doesn’t like me and also why would I call her? She’s not from Wakanda.”

“Um, she’s dating their king?” Darcy scoffed.

“What? Since when?” Tony asked.

“Since like three or four months ago? _Variety_ called them the year’s top power-couple?” Darcy shook her head. “They were on the cover in full costume, Tony. Call her, make nice, warn her that vibranium might be an even hotter commodity for a little while. We all go out for ice cream, warmed by the glow of a job well done.”

“What if I just text her?” Tony asked.

“What if you just text the potential queen of the most technologically-advanced country on earth, who also controls weather, and who also already doesn’t really like you, that we’re about to put a kiloton sized dent in the vibranium market,” Lucy muttered. “Do you even listen to yourself when your mouth’s flapping?”

“You’ve texted people worse things,” Tony snapped. “Also, do you know what a kiloton is?”

“I _am_ worse things,” Lucy pointed out. Tony squinted at her and cocked his head. “You know what I fucking mean. And I know vibranium dust in an enclosed space is going to send this shit off like a fucking rocket.”

“Why is everyone I know completely insane?” Tony asked.

“Just call her, you big dope,” Darcy said.

Tony pulled out his phone and scrolled through his contacts. The truck creaked again as Lucy hoisted the TNT onto her shoulder and wrangled it into the barrel.

“Hi, Ororo? It’s Tony.” He paused. “Yes, Stark. Tony Stark. That Tony. No, I’m actually not calling to apologize for Hawkeye. What did he even do? Oh? Really? That doesn’t sound like...no, that’s not what I’m saying. Look, I’ll look into it, okay? And after I’ve done that, then I’ll call to apologize, even though I’m not technically responsible for the Hawkeye who’s a teenage girl. No, I don’t even know...because I’m barely responsible enough to keep a potted plant alive on my own, that’s why. No one in their right mind would...no, no. I get why you’d be upset.” Tony suppressed a sigh and glared at Darcy. “Here’s the thing. You and the Black Panther are still dating, right? Okay, I’m technically calling for him, but...no, I know you’re not his social secretary. That’s not...yes. Yes, I understand. Yes, I know there are like ten X-teams now, and you’re in charge of all of them. Yeah, I imagine that is a job and a half...no, of course he has people for this. Look...have you heard of a magician called Lucy Jones? No, no codename. Just...yes.”

Tony covered the mouthpiece and raised his eyebrows. “Why is she this mad at _you_?”

“Fuck if I know,” Lucy said.

“The thing with Magik?” Darcy suggested.

“That seems kind of a weird thing to still be pissed over. Are they friends?” Lucy asked them.

Darcy shrugged, and Tony rolled his eyes at her.

“Okay, yeah. Yeah, no, I’m still here. Yes, that Lucy Jones. No, I don’t know...yes, I’ve met her. No, I totally agree….I think maybe she didn’t get enough attention as a child.”

“You leave my fucking parents out of this,” Lucy snapped, her eyes glittering. “I will fucking hurt you.”

“It’s also possible, probable even, that she ate one too many tabs of bad acid instead, and that her parents were saints,” Tony continued. “I really couldn’t tell you….Wait, what about Belize?” Tony shot Lucy a disbelieving stare. “No, no. That’s awful. You know what? Hang on a second.” Tony covered the mouthpiece for a while. “Ororo? Yeah. I talked to her. She’s _extremely_ sorry about that whole mess.”

“Are you apologizing for me? Don’t you fucking dare--”

Tony waved her off, jerking the phone out of her reach. “She was in a bad place, that’s pretty much what it boils down to….no, I completely understand. I’ll talk to her. Is Magik’s number still the same? I’ll have her call Magik directly to apologize...yes, of course. It’s the least I can do, that sounds awful. Anyway, here’s the thing. She’s kind of about to inconvenience some really ugly customers, and there’s a decent chance it’s going to slop over at Wakanda a little. I just wanted to pass along the tip, make sure you guys knew what was up. What? No, vibranium.” Tony sucked at his teeth. “No, I know the country can take care of itself. I just thought it would be rude to maybe be sending a bunch of extra douchebags your way without telling you why...well, an ancient Asgardian fire monster, if you can believe it.”

Tony’s brows furrowed, and he chewed his lip.

“Okay, yes, I see your point, I do, I just don’t see _why_ you can’t believe it.” Tony rubbed his temple with his free hand. “Well, because. You’re friends with a magician, and you showed up for the last kegger an Asgardian threw, and you apparently know firsthand how irresponsible Jones is. Where, exactly, is this going off the rails for you?”

Darcy winced and gestured for him to calm down.

“I don’t know, probably because she’s the most plausibly-deniable Asgardian on the roster.”

“I’m not an Asgardian,” Lucy grunted, tapping her foot. Tony ignored her.

“Did I…? Yeah, actually.” Tony frowned. “No, it was really nice, for a tiny chapel wedding in Vegas. Why? Oh. _Oh_. No, hang on, I’ll ask her.”

Tony pressed the phone to his chest and shot them both a persecuted look.

“What?” Lucy asked.

“How would you go about getting Strange to stop insisting on doing the decorations for the state wedding when or if they get married?”

“Are you serious? Oh my god, you are.” Lucy stared at him. “Insist he keep a timesheet so they can track his billable hours and cut him a check. Fucking duh.”

“Oh, shit, that’s right.” Tony laughed and shook his head. “He really does get his nose out of joint if you try to pay in cash, doesn’t he?”

“Never met a guy with such an unhealthy contempt for good old-fashioned capitalism before in my life,” Lucy agreed.

“Jones says if you try to pay him like a normal decorator it’ll be like holy water on a vampire,” Tony said into the phone.

“Holy water might also work,” Lucy said. “I mean, that particular stripe of pompous dick tends to react more or less like a cat to getting water thrown on them, so…”

“I’m not telling her that, because then she’ll tell him I told her that,” Tony explained. He put the phone back to his mouth. “No, absolutely, you’re welcome. Are we cool now? What? No, like, is there some possibility you’ll stop bricking my armor? None whatsoever, huh? Well, it’s been nice chatting. Good luck with Strange!”

Tony hung up and stared at his phone.

“Why did you make me do that?” he finally asked, looking a little shell-shocked.

“It was basically your idea?” Darcy pointed out.

“Yeah, we were both on Team Wakanda Can Deal With It,” Lucy told him. She climbed into the cab. “Everybody got their earplugs? ‘Cuz I’m hitting the button.”

“Why do you get to hit the button?” Darcy demanded.

Lucy stuck her head out the window and looked at her for a moment. “Why do you get to hit the button on my human cannonball truck to get my plan going?”

“You’ve got magic, he’s got a rocket-suit, I should at least get to hit the button,” Darcy said stubbornly. “It’s like, only fair.”

“I will rock-paper-scissors you for it,” Lucy offered.

“How did this even turn into a thing?” Tony asked. “You can just, you know,” he snapped his fingers, “and blow it up with magic.”

“And I can just buy a vibrator, too,” Lucy said. “Doesn’t mean I’m never going to try to get a date again, does it?”

She angled her arm out the window. “On three, Lewis.”

“One, two, three.” 

Darcy squealed and slapped Lucy’s closed fist with her flat palm. “Paper covers rock! Move over, I’m pushing the button!”

Lucy groaned and slid out of the truck.

“Great,” Tony chirped. “Now we all smell like menthols, and Darcy’s a felon.”

The cannon boomed, and smoke came pouring out of the side vents.

“I thought you said this ran on compressed air,” Tony groaned, flipping his visor down and engaging the air purifier.

Lucy waved the smoke away. “It does, that’s just a special effect. Or like the ghost of special effects past, I guess. And Lewis has been involved in so many felonies by now it’s not even funny. She basically helped Thor flatten the saddest SHIELD installation of all time while you were still getting airborne DUIs, remember? She keeps weaseling out of it because she’s tiny and adorable and not above just deleting people’s databases.”

She watched the canister descend, then drop perfectly into the entrance of the mine.

“Dead fucking bang,” Lucy shouted, pumping her fist. “Suck on that, Surtur!”

Darcy slid out of the cab and gave a little whoop as the first puff of smoke and debris mushroomed out of the shaft.

“I think we might want to--” Tony’s warning was cut off by the dull roar of the explosion, and he turned to cover Darcy with his body. Lucy lowered her sunglasses and threw up a forcefield.

Tony glared at her over his shoulder as the sudden wave of dust and rock broke against the invisible bubble and went rushing past them, harmless.

“What?” Lucy asked. “This isn’t exactly amateur hour, Stark.”

“I appreciate the thought, though, because I’d really like to not die from being a hero,” Darcy said, her voice muffled by the armor.

“Come on, she’s missing the double-mushroom cloud.” Lucy grinned at the tower of ash rising from the mine. “Goddamn. I’m having this thing fucking painted and mounted over the mantle.”

“Oh!” Darcy gasped. “That’s really something, isn’t it?”

“The sort of something SHIELD’s probably going to notice in pretty short order,” Tony pointed out. A shower of pebbles bounced off the forcefield and started raining down around them.

“Pfft. It’s Montana,” Lucy said. “Second only to Texas in its terrible workplace disasters that nobody cares about. It’s gonna be like two or three days before anyone gets around to reporting it as a workplace accident, unless somebody’s stupid enough to stick the video on youtube.”

“Why are you looking at me?” Darcy demanded. “You _and_ Fury yelled at me about the last time. I learn from my mistakes, thank you. This isn’t going on youtube for another few weeks.”

Tony cleared his throat and flushed.

“You didn’t,” Lucy sighed.

“Well, not me, no,” Tony coughed. “JARVIS, on the other hand…”

“Goddammit, Stark.”


	90. Chapter 90

Tony drained his coffee mug and glanced around the shabby mobile office with distaste. Lucy was busy with Darcy’s phone, but at least she’d stopped nattering away at boring-sounding people about their equally boring-sounding families at breakneck speed and with little apparent point. He was almost hoping someone would notice the stolen trailer, parked barely five miles from the blast site, and start a fight. Anything to relieve the monotony.

“I get the feeling I really should have seen this coming,” Tony sighed. “I mean, you did say Phase Two of all your plans turns into a rolling dumpster fire.”

“I never said that,” Lucy told him without looking up from the phone, “and this is more like Phase One of a different prong, so that doesn’t count. Also? Not even close to a rolling dumpster fire, by my standards. For one thing, nothing’s actually on fire.”

“JARVIS?” Tony prompted smugly.

A muffled recording of Lucy’s voice began playing. “My plans don’t have phases, because I’m capable of learning from experience, and none of them ever make it to phase two without getting horribly derailed.”

“You just have that thing running all the time? Just picking up everything, filing it away for later?” Lucy asked. “Creepy.”

“It’s not creepy, it’s sensible.”

“Do your friends and loved ones know about it?”

Tony squirmed a little. “They know about JARVIS.”

“Do they know your creepy robot is creeping on them every time they’re within earshot of you?” she persisted.

“JARVIS isn’t creeping on them,” Tony said defensively. He was collecting data that Tony would otherwise miss, and making sure it was entered into the appropriate calendars with a reasonable window for reminders.

“If you can’t answer the question, it’s creepy.” She crossed her arms. “And also? You’re an asshole. Do something useful and make another pot of coffee, asshole.”

“You’ve spent the last three hours--”

“ _One_ hour.”

“JARVIS?”

“Three hours and twenty-one minutes, sir.”

Tony pointed at her triumphantly. “Ha!”

“Like I’m going to trust your weird robot henchman with the stopwatch,” Lucy snorted, her eyes narrowing. “Of course he’s going to back you up.”

“As I was saying, you spend the last _three hours_ on the phone catching up with old pals, and I’m the asshole?” He got to his feet, and the trailer’s floor creaked ominously. Maybe it was a good thing Steve wasn’t around to add to the stress on the thin panels and brittle rivets. “We’re supposed to be saving the world. And I’m only making another pot of coffee because I want more coffee. It has nothing to do with you sounding almost disappointed about things not being actually on fire.”

“It’s not polite to go around pointing out all the times people totally said shit they forgot they told you,” Lucy said, finally looking up. “So yes, I’m calling you an asshole. And you know you can go home, right? After you make the coffee, obviously, but nobody actually needs you here. Go make out with your hot girlfriend and take her out for absurdly tiny portions of massively overpriced food at some place with a string of unprounceable symbols instead of a name and a kitchen full of exploited labor and neglect to tell her your knockoff Siri is creeping on everything the entire time.”

Tony walked gingerly back to the tiny kitchen midway between the broken-down sofa that hadn’t been done any favors by the weight of his suit and the bedroom-turned-meeting room Darcy had claimed as a tech center. The idea of leaving her and Darcy to their own devices with a potential threat of that magnitude bearing down on the planet made him shudder.

“I don’t know if you noticed, but my vacation home is in Martha’s Vineyard, not another dimension. So really, if you’re going to be dicking around instead of doing something useful, I think somebody more responsible than Jane Foster’s unpaid minion should be here to pick up the slack.”

Lucy rubbed her eyes and sat up straight. “You built yourself a personal rocket suit. You don’t get to call yourself more responsible than someone who, to date, hasn’t done that.”

“I built myself a personal rocket suit that works flawlessly, whenever you’re not around to screw with it. She attacked a god with something she bought at a department store. Twice.” Tony glanced at the closed door. “What’s she doing in there, anyway? More pointless chit-chat?”

“Department stores at least quality-test,” Lucy pointed out, ignoring his question. “And here’s the thing, Stark.” She scrolled through her contacts list. “When people call you for help, and you haven’t heard from them in a while, are you more likely or less likely to help them if they at least pretend to give a shit about whatever’s going on in your life before they ask?”

“Well, _my_ time is valuable, and I don’t enjoy gloating, so I’d actually prefer they just cut to the chase so I can get off the phone and back to saving the world.” Tony rolled his hand in a get-on-with-it gesture. “Like we should be doing, say, right now. Instead of camping out in a shitty mining company’s stolen, shitty trailer drinking shitty coffee in my third least-favorite state.”

“You have favorite and least-favorite states?” Lucy asked, pursing her lips.

“Do you not?” He blinked at her. “You always struck me as the sort of person who really would.”

“Didn’t you specifically request some senator who’d been a dick to you pin a medal on you in that public circlejerk after your stuff went rogue at your expo and wrecked up your convention center?” Lucy reminded him. She got to her feet and twisted until her spine popped.

“And that’s the one and only time I’ve ever enjoyed a good gloat,” Tony said, smiling blithely at her. “I tried it, I didn’t care for it, and I moved on with my personal development.”

He got the coffee out of the particle-board cabinet and shook it. There was barely enough left for another pot, and he was tempted to just call the tower. There was no real reason it had to be him babysitting the operation instead of Steve. If Steve tapped him out, he could probably talk Pepper into hitting the beach, and then neither of them would have to worry about the floor giving way.

“I guess I just run with a crowd of less advanced beings, because when I haven’t talked to somebody for over a year, they want a little ego-fluffing before they want the opportunity to exchange a comparatively small sum of money for a good shot at being brutally murdered for selling out HYDRA.” Lucy waved a hand, and the canister was suddenly full again. “And maybe the coffee wouldn’t be so shitty if it wasn’t so shittily made, Stark.”

“Who doesn’t want to sell out HYDRA?” Tony asked, frowning. “At the drop of a hat, I mean? They’re assholes. Like, real assholes, not what you seem to think passes for being an asshole.”

“Generally?” she asked. “People who work for it. They would like to continue, you know, drawing a paycheck and not being shot in the face for treachery.”

“People who work for HYDRA are definitely less advanced beings,” Tony grunted. “Except maybe in the technological or killing-for-fun senses.” 

“I guess it’s a little hard to dispute that one. But you know, if the price is right and they’re reasonably sure they won’t get caught, that also means most of their employees will roll on them.” Lucy walked out the door and leaned on the wall directly outside the kitchen window before lighting a cigarette. She shot him a fake smile through the screen. “Fortunately, the same goes for just about every other douchenozzle globo-corp out there. We should have the financials on all our likely suspects by five o’clock local time.”

“You know, when I asked you to at least smoke outside, I was thinking more like that fifty feet from the entrance rule, not somewhere you can still carry on a conversation from.” Tony scowled at her. “It’s bad enough you made me drive that stupid tar-coated cannon-truck instead of just towing this thing.”

“This thing wouldn’t have stood up to you towing it, and I for one don’t feel like doing all this shit outside,” Lucy sighed.

“We could find a nice climate-controlled SHIELD facility,” he said. He made a face at the canister. “I don’t really want to drink magic coffee, do I?”

“I can’t possibly be more dangerous than boozing your way through a guided-missile demonstration in a war-torn hellhole.” Lucy took a long drag. “And I figure for this stage, the less chance of this getting traced back to SHIELD, the better. Even if it shakes out right, it’s going to start a category five shitstorm. You might be able to score another mind-control hall-pass, but I think they’re pissed enough at me for the moment.”

Tony shook his head. He still wasn’t entirely sure he believed them. Or maybe it was the Asgardians he didn’t believe. He’d trust Thor with his life, but Thor was off enjoying his honeymoon, and all the surreptitious texting of the last three hours had failed to get an answer out of him.

“You really think HYDRA’s switched from wanting to take over the world to wanting to destroy it?” he asked.

“As an overarching organization? No. Maybe some tiny rogue splinter cell within HYDRA? Sure.” Lucy shrugged and squinted against a sudden gust of wind. The whole trailer rocked under Tony’s feet, and he grimaced at the shoddy manufacturing. The whole thing felt like it had been made out of a nickel’s worth of aluminum and a roll of duct tape.

“Hell,” she continued, “it probably happens more often than anybody knows. It’s not like wanting to blow up the planet is any likelier to coincide with competence than, say, wanting to be mayor of Albuquerque. They never get close to doing it, nobody outside the inner circle hears about it. I ever tell you about the time I was part of a pick-up team recruited by some hedge-fund manager who wanted to find El Dorado?”

“Is that where you got the money to bribe contacts in a half-dozen major criminal enterprises all over the world? Somebody at Lehman Brothers close enough to indictment that they had to pony up some hush money?” It made a certain amount of sense. He’d meant enough of their top talent to stop being surprised when the next one turned out to be crazy as a shithouse rat.

“Something like that,” Lucy chuckled. She finished the cigarette and ground out the butt, and a shower of grit followed her back inside. “How well did you attach that satellite dish?”

“The welding’s fine. It’s the roof it’s attached to we have to worry about,” Tony sighed. He glanced at her, his eyes hard. “You aren’t planning to use this to convince me you’ve really been a good person all along and to put in a good word for you with Hill, are you?”

Lucy steepled her fingers and pressed them to her lips for a moment as she watched him like she was figuring her odds.

“Sweet monkey Jesus, you’re serious,” she said finally, shaking her head. “There’s like zero chance Hill’s going to listen to you about anything. You’re only a couple of rungs up from me in her book.”

“That’s not humanly possible! Hill loves me. She comes to all my parties.”

Lucy cocked her head. “You crash-landed on the Porsche she’d literally just paid off. Doing ‘sick stunts’ for ‘the youtube,’ if I heard right.”

“I did not crash-land on her…” Tony took a deep breath, the color draining from his face. “Oh my god, that was hers?”

The car had been perfect and gorgeous and he could still hear the crunch of glass and metal when he’d stalled out and done a belly-flop right on the roof.

“That’s what I heard,” Lucy said, snorting.

“Wait.” Tony glared at her. “Heard from who?”

“Pym.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Hank did not tell you that. Hank doesn’t tell you anything. Hank is in therapy because you’re so horrible.”

“That’s just a cover story for hitting the bar during lunch and complaining about the latest stupid thing you did trying to win a bet with Barton,” Lucy said, examining her fingernails. She picked a business card out from under the couch and started cleaning soot out from under them with the edges.

“That’s the least-plausible lie you’ve ever told me.” 

“It really isn’t.” She fake-smiled at him.

Tony stopped and frowned suddenly. “Wait, I replaced that Porsche with a brand new one. Same color and everything.”

“I think it was the principle of the thing. She’d probably named it or something.” Lucy shrugged. “Anyway, no, I’m not trying to trick you into thinking I’m a good person, or that I’ve reformed, or any of that bullshit. Like I said, I’m here because I got hired to be here, and because not being here seems like a really irreversibly terrible idea.” Lucy twisted her fingers and produced a credit card from thin air. “Also? When I said ‘something like that,’ I meant ‘you’re bankrolling this.’”

“Is that really why Darcy called me? So I could comp everything?” Tony groused, snatching at the card. Pepper was going to kill him when she got the bill for this. 

The floor gave way under him, leaving him knee-deep in insulation, and Tony wondered if he could hire someone to lightly savage the designer and blame it on Lucy.

The card vanished again, and she smiled thinly. “Maybe next time don’t apologize to X-People about stuff I’m not sorry for.”

Tony glowered at her, then sighed and began trying to extract himself from the floor without making the problem worse. 

“I’m not sorry I told the woman who can make it rain _ice bowling balls_ that you’re sorry about whatever it was, exactly, that you framed one of her biggest gal-pals for.”

“Oh, shit.” Lucy’s eyebrows went up. “They’re sleeping together? Since when?” She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “Spill it.”

“No? Or at least, I don’t think so?” Tony’s brows furrowed as he ran through all the rumors he’d heard. “They’re just friends?”

“I don’t think gal-pals means what you think it means,” Lucy told him, chuckling.

He looked stricken. “But Pepper’s got tons of gal-pals.”

“Does she _call_ them that?” she asked.

“No.”

“Does she like laugh and say ‘you wish’ when you call them that?” she prompted.

“Yes?” He sank deeper through the floor, until his feet touched the ground.

“Are you asking me or are you telling me?” Lucy asked. She leaned back and crossed her arms, watching as his attempts to leverage himself back out of the hole in the floor resulted in palm-sized chunks of thinly-carpeted sheet metal collapsing around him.

“Well, she doesn’t literally do that, but she does give me a kind of judgmental look and shake her head and then pour herself a really strong drink.”

“And that never struck you as, I don’t know, a little weird?” 

Tony rested his arms on the floor and gave her a long look. 

“Okay, yes,” Lucy sighed, rolling her eyes. “Question retracted on the grounds of being incredibly stupid. That’s probably her default response to ninety percent of the shit you pull, isn’t it? It’s just you telling her about your day and her staring at you and pouring more and more booze into her glass.”

“It did actually strike me as just the teensiest bit weird.” Tony rubbed his chin. “Maybe about one tenth as weird as me having to find this out from you. Can I please have that card back? Before she finds out you’re paying fucking _AIM_ with it? And I get that response on steroids?”

“Not until I’m done with it. And I’m not paying AIM directly. What sort of fucking idiot would funnel their bribe through the storefront of the company they’re betraying?”

“Well...”

“It was rhetorical, Stark, oh my god.” She rolled her eyes. “My guess would be that at least half the charges are going to show up as adult entertainment companies, though, so…” Lucy paused. “I could order her some flowers and a crate of top-shelf vodka, while I’m at it. Or is she a gin girl?”

“Please do not do anything that’s going to impede my ability to explain that it’s all you and Darcy’s fault,” Tony said. “Please.”

“I should probably do Lewis the solid of saying that I don’t think I mentioned this specific part of the plan when I was busy not being able to ditch her at various truck stops and gas stations.” Lucy jerked her chin at the closed door. “That girl’s like some sort of precognitive limpet, honestly. Every time you think you’ve scraped her off, bam. She’s hanging on tighter than ever and you don’t even know how she got back in the car.”

“I think it might have something to do with you jumping out of that cab while it was doing forty in Vegas,” Tony pointed out. “She still seemed kind of pissed about it when Fury called us on the carpet for the whole ‘Who Wants to Marry an Asgardian?’ thing.”

“Oh, yeah.” Lucy made a face. “In my defense, she kept trying to feed me.”

“You don’t have to defend yourself to me,” Tony assured her. “I already think you’re a genuinely and irretrievably terrible person.”

“Aw.” Lucy wrinkled her nose. “That’s the sweetest thing an Avenger who doesn’t think they’re related to me because of an undiagnosed head injury has ever said to me.” Tony made a point of scratching his cheek with his middle finger. “Anyway, because I’m feeling extraordinarily generous, feel free to think of this--and explain it to your girlfriend--as a legitimate business transaction.”

“Because this way I get to have a business that exists on a planet that exists?” Tony grunted.

“Because we may have...appropriated the last shipment of vibranium out of the mine that’s now a big crater.” Lucy spread her hands, then dropped one to rap sharply on the horizontal filing cabinet bolted to the trailer’s wall. “And with the prices on vibranium already skyrocketing and some lingering personal problems with the lone legitimate supplier, I’m thinking that if that were to somehow wind up in Stark Industries’s inventory, you’d be sitting on a pretty solid investment in materials. One that would,” she flipped the credit card out again, “more than cover what I’m spending on intel right now making sure that yes, you get to have a business that exists on a planet that exists. Sound good?”

“Sounds less awful than most of your plans, yes.” Tony pursed his lips. “Maybe. I guess we’ll see what we find when your guy crunches the numbers and comes up with someone to hit really hard. I’m personally holding out for HYDRA.”

“My guy?” Lucy said slowly.

“You do have a guy for this, right? That accounts-ninja? Steve’s pen-pals with his daughter?” Tony stopped. “Pen-pals still means just pen-pals, right? I don’t have to have a long, awkward conversation about appropriate mentor-mentee relationships to Captain America, do I?”

“I have an accountant who does my taxes and handles my inevitable audits and is currently not speaking to me outside of things that pertain strictly to my existing business relationship with him.” Lucy puffed out her cheeks. “I was kind of thinking that we could take this big pile of financial data to Wasp, actually. See what she makes of it.”

“Your accountant isn’t speaking to you.”

“Except for, you know, my taxes.”

“Why isn’t your accountant speaking to you?” Tony demanded.

“Why do you care why my accountant isn’t speaking to me?” Lucy asked. “I mean, you probably don’t speak to your accountants, like, ever, and I don’t care why _that_ is.”

“Yeah, but when my accountants aren’t speaking to me, it’s for perfectly normal accountant reasons, like I just bought out a company with terrible record-keeping and a long history of financial improprieties which also isn’t profitable,” he said, bracing his hands on the floor and trying again with no better results. “When your accountant isn’t speaking to you, it’s probably for some super-embarrassing reason, like you slept with his wife.”

“I would never!” Lucy gasped. “And also she’s straight as a fucking arrow.”

“If you tell me why he’s not speaking to you, I’ll tell Jan this whole thing was my idea.”

“If I do something I don’t want to do, you’ll take credit for me doing something heroic?” Lucy picked at her teeth. “That’s dumb, even by your standards.”

“But doing something heroic at this point would just be the last nail hammered right into your reputation’s coffin, wouldn’t it?” Tony asked reasonably. “Just think. ‘Lucy Jones saves the world.’ Make a great headline, wouldn’t it? I’m pretty sure I own at least one newspaper. I could make it happen.”

“Yes, that whole one dude who still reads newspapers would question my credibility, and we can’t have that,” she snorted. “Weren’t you literally just telling me about how you don’t gloat?”

“Being around you is making me backslide. It’s terrible. Pepper’s right about you being a bad influence.”

“Pepper’s a very smart woman, and you should listen to her and leave me alone as quickly as possible,” Lucy told him.

“Come on. I already know you’re shady, and a trainwreck, and capable of the pettiest bullshit this side of Strange enchanting a fire hydrant to follow Dormammu’s car around NYC and keep getting it towed. How much worse could this be?” Tony wheedled. “Also, any time you feel like helping me out here would be great.”

“Fine.” Lucy stalked around him, surveying the damage to the floor. She crouched until she was at eve-level with him. “So long as you can answer one question.”

“I’m not telling you any state secrets,” Tony warned, suddenly nervous.

“You don’t _know_ any state secrets,” she reminded him. “Nobody in their right mind would trust you with a state secret.”

“Did you have a question or not?” he snapped.

“What the fuck does an extradimensional entity whose head is on fire like all the fucking time need with a goddamned car?”

Tony pressed his lips together. “Apparently, _someone_ told him that’s how you get earth-chicks.”

She cocked her head. “Does that tone mean something, or…?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, was that not you?” Tony asked. She considered the question for a moment.

“The closest I’ve ever gotten to doing anything that could even remotely pass for that is breaking a bottle over Ghost Rider’s head, and that was an accident.” Lucy cleared her throat. “Not that I stuck around to explain that to him.”

“Because he’d kick your ass?” Tony asked.

Lucy shrugged. “Maybe? Mostly because feeling bad about things I’ve done makes me itchy, and he’s got that thing he does with his eyes, which shouldn’t work because he doesn’t even have them but it somehow does, where he looks at you like a puppy you just stepped on by accident.”

“That cannot possibly be how that power works,” Tony sighed. Not that he had an alternate theory, but he was sure Strange could help him out with one if he could fire off a text when Lucy wasn’t looking. “So, I held up my end of the deal.”

She shot him a hunted look before caving. “He’s not speaking to me because I accidentally endorsed him when he was running for county commissioner.”

“And you’re not exactly a home-town hero?”

“I am, it might surprise you to hear, something of a divisive figure in local politics.” 

“And a little help with this?” Tony gestured vaguely to the floor.

Lucy smiled thinly and waved her hand at him. “I give unto you _the power of flight_.”

Tony managed to look even more persecuted by life than he had before, which he felt was an accomplishment.

“Not funny. You know what’s going to happen if I fire up the repulsors while I’m wedged in the middle of this deathtrap. Or was that what you were counting on?” 

“Well, it would get us to the ‘actually on fire’ part,” Lucy said.

Tony grimaced at her as she straightened and walked away. “How do you accidentally endorse someone? I mean, I’ve endorsed people out of spite before, but it was always deliberate.”

“As it turns out, a local news crew asks you if you think somebody’s an okay person, and you fail to publicly repudiate them. I was trying to endorse him as a businessman and didn’t know he was running for office. As he later pointed out, at length, that information was included in his last newsletter, which I did receive, and this is not the first time a camera crew from that news station has gone around filming gotcha-interviews about local candidates, and I am technically the founder of a super-PAC was a _really_ unfortunate name.” Lucy tapped her fingernails on the table. “So. He does have some just cause to be upset over it.”

“Like I said, you’re a terrible person,” Tony said. “Now, seriously, please help me out of this.”

Lucy took a picture of him instead and looked toward the back room. “Hey, Lewis, how’re you coming with that video?”

“Just about done. Did you guys make more coffee?” Darcy’s voice was muffled by the thin door, and Tony turned around to check on the coffee-maker.

“If she steals the entire pot because I’m stuck in the floor, I will cancel that card,” he promised. “I can do it from the suit, you know.”

“I’ll make her leave you a cup,” Lucy said, picking up a magazine. “Pinky-swear.”

*****

“Okay, I’m finished,” Darcy announced, bursting out of the office. She stopped when she saw Tony halfway through the floor and Lucy thumbing through a copy of _Miner’s Weekly_. “Jesus, guys. I was only in there for like an hour.”

“Four hours and ten minutes,” JARVIS chirped.

“What?” Darcy’s brows furrowed. “Does he just go around timing things like that?”

“Apparently,” Lucy said.

“Creepy.”

Lucy shot Tony a triumphant look, and Tony pointedly pretended not to notice.

“The construction’s substandard,” he explained.

“He threatened to smear my good name in the press,” Lucy said, pointing at him.

“You deliberately weakened the floor so I’d fall through it, didn’t you?” Tony asked, glaring at her and crossing his arms. The effect was ruined by the necessity of maneuvering them around the flooring, and he compensated by glowering even more sternly.

“No, but her next question is going to be why I didn’t do something, followed by that little noise she makes when she thinks people she’s not in charge of are being unreasonable.”

Darcy huffed and rubbed her forehead.

“See? That noise.”

“You _are_ being unreasonable,” Tony pointed out.

“Will you please get him out of there, and fix the floor, and come take a look at this?” Darcy asked, her tone cold. “Honestly, the pair of you.”

Lucy sighed and stomped over to Tony. “Truce?”

“Truce.” He extended his hand, and Lucy pulled him out of the hole before papering it over with plywood. “That is not going to hold.”

“We shouldn’t be here much longer,” Darcy said, frowning at it. “Right? You got what you needed? I mean, you had way more time than you should have needed.”

The phone chimed, and she checked it quickly.

“Last hold-out just delivered,” she said, nodding. “And no, once that video goes live, we really shouldn’t hang around. This is going to turn into a hot-spot with a quickness.”

“And then we go see Jan and figure out if it worked?” Darcy brightened visibly.

“Well, once somebody finds his balls and texts her.” Lucy shot Tony a scalding look.

“Don’t even start on that again. It’s your fault she’s allergic to the word ‘magic.’ If I show up with this and you, she’s going to throw me out a window.”

“You can fly,” Darcy said reasonably.

“I still don’t see how a video’s going to help you find out who’s trying to unleash an Asgardian hell-monster on all of existence,” Tony muttered, scowling.

Darcy turned her laptop toward them and hit play. “White Wedding” blared over the speakers.

“Billy Idol?” Lucy asked.

“It seemed appropriate,” Darcy said smoothly. Lucy made a face but didn’t object again.

Tony watched as the video rolled through several loops before finding his voice again.

“Jeff von Flagsmasher the Third?” he asked slowly.

“Well, I’ve never heard anything indicating that’s _not_ his name, so…” Lucy shrugged. She looked at Darcy. “I really liked the part where you added the strobe effect when the mannequin dressed like Doom got hit with the electric guitar.”

“Good, because that took a really long time,” Darcy said, her shoulders relaxing. “But I thought it would be worth it.”

“Flag-Smasher’s name isn’t really Jeff, is it?” Tony asked.

“Fuck if I know,” Lucy told him.

“And the confetti-hose with the MODOK pinatas. You understand that that’s going to be taken as a bukake thing, right?” Tony continued.

“Why else would I have used white confetti bits?” Lucy asked.

He rubbed his temples. “I thought you didn’t really shape-shift into guys if you could help it?”

“How would you even--” Lucy sighed and gave Darcy a narrow look. She smiled back innocently. “You know what? I don’t want to know.”

“Volstagg told us,” Darcy confessed.

“Ugh.” Lucy made a face. “Fucking Sif. She’s known that guy for five thousand years, she knows he can’t keep his mouth shut.” She crossed her arms and looked back to Tony. “That’s in a _personal setting_. Business is a little different. Also, I didn’t. This is what we in the magic business refer to as an _illusion_. Which is way easier, really.”

“Well, that makes perfect sense, then,” Tony said, nodding as if it did. “Why exactly are you blaming Flag-Smasher for the data breach?”

“Upload it?” Darcy asked. Lucy gave her a thumbs up.

“Because I have to blame somebody--”

“Do you really, though?”

Lucy ran her fingers through her hair and stared at him.

“Are you finished?” she asked.

“I might be,” Tony said after a few seconds.

“Okay. _So._ If we don’t want them going on a mole-hunt once they realize their data’s out there and then finding out it’s us, then yes, we do kind of need a scapegoat,” Lucy said. “If they think they know who did it, they won’t just go sniffing through their metadata--”

“Not even remotely how to describe that,” Tony pointed out.

“--until they figure it out. As to why I picked ULTIMATUM, that is because their leader’s a douchebag, their motif is stupid, and they owe me one-point-eight million dollars.”

“What, you accepted a down payment on letting them off the island?” Tony demanded. “Why would even think that was a good idea?”

“Yeah, that kind of seems like a bad move,” Darcy said, wincing in sympathy. “Which is a shame, because that’s a lot of money.”

“No, I didn’t accept a down payment. I am not, in fact, an idiot. They paid me in funny-money,” Lucy explained. 

“You should have authenticated it first,” Tony said, smirking.

“Yes, I know, _mom_ ,” she grunted. “But I didn’t.”

Darcy frowned. “So don’t they owe you two million?”

“I was able to offload it onto a dodgy Australian start-up for two hundred thousand dollars of real currency, though, so I’m willing to be gracious,” Lucy said.

“Except you just put a target on their backs the size of Texas.” Tony tilted his head at the laptop. “Or rather, you had your minion put a target on their backs the size of Texas.”

“I’m not a minion, I’m an intern,” Darcy said firmly.

“Same thing,” they said in unison.

Lucy cleared her throat. “But I _was_ planning on turning them all into human-sized piles of salamanders.”

“Yeah, I don’t know that this is better.” Tony made a face. “I mean, neither one is what I’d do with my Saturday night. But just hanging out in a pond maybe eating some bugs versus a running gun-battle with every organized bad guy on the planet?”

“At least this way they don’t have to worry about chytridiomycosis,” Lucy said.

“But see, they do have to worry about death by gunshot wounds. Which, having been shot at a lot, I can personally testify is not a great way to spend your time.”

Darcy’s brows furrowed, and she closed the laptop. “Isn’t that in their job description already, though?”

“Right?” Lucy nodded. “Also, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a human-sized pile of salamanders try to go around doing human things like depositing a check or driving a car, but believe me, death by gunshot wounds is also a significant risk there, too. People really do not react well to that.”

“And you know this from experience?” Tony asked archly.

Darcy stared at him, and Lucy shook her head.

“Of course you do,” Tony sighed, putting a hand to his face. “I don’t know why I asked that.”

“Seriously,” Darcy said. “And, guys, you do realize I uploaded that video like five minutes ago now, right?”

“Four minutes and sixteen seconds,” JARVIS confirmed.

Lucy shifted her weight from one foot to the other and chafed her arms. “Right. So.”

“We should leave,” Tony prompted.

“Yeah, we really should, shouldn’t we?”

Lucy wrenched the filing cabinet from the wall, the metal creaking as it gave, and broke the locks. Tony blinked when he saw how much vibranium was concealed beneath the fake file folders.

“Well, that’s a hell of a party favor,” he breathed. “And this is all mine?”

“Sure. What am I going to do with it?”

“Sit on a pile of it and taunt people?” Tony hazarded. “I mean, that’s what I’m planning on doing for at least a few months.”

“You’re both awful,” Darcy said, tucking her laptop back into its case and heading for the door. “JARVIS, please call Jan. Tony, please unhitch the trailer. Lucy, please start the truck.”

“Did she just boss us?” Tony asked as the door banged shut.

“And so the student became the master,” Lucy chuckled. “You know what that means, though.”

“What?”

“I’m driving.” Lucy raised her eyebrows and sauntered toward the truck.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Lucy Jones and Tezcatlipoca](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5182691) by [Skarl_the_drummer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skarl_the_drummer/pseuds/Skarl_the_drummer)




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